
Class _ .:!_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



I 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



MEMORIES OF 
A PURITAN CHILDHOOD 



BY 



SARAH STUART ROBBINS 




BOSTON 
THE PILGRIM PRESS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO 

1908 



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Copyright, 190S 
By Sarah Stuart Rob bins 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 

MOSES STUART 



¥ 



I 



FOREWORD 



THE world of my childhood has 
passed away. Puritanism, with 
its virile asceticism, its restrained but 
lofty and concentrated fervor, is not 
only obsolete but misunderstood. Puri- 
tan Andover, once a leader in missions, 
theology, and religious life, by clinging 
too long to ancient good, has in great 
measure lost its ascendency, and is at 
last wisely turning to new fields of 
labor. There are few left now, of the 
world that is gone, to interpret Puritan 
Andover to the new world of to-day. 
No formal interpretation is attempted 
here ; the memories of an Andover 
childhood, as they have been sifted 
by fourscore passing years, are plainly 



FOREWORD 



written down, in the hope that these 

simple facts of our every-day hfe may 

carry with them some message warm 

from the heart of that once hving and 

vigorous age. 

S. S. R. 



[viii] 



CONTENTS 



• • 



Page 

I Andover Hill 1 

II The Sabbath of Old Andover . 29 

III The Schools on Andover Hill . 56 

IV Andover Week-Day Meetings . 73 
V Andover Holidays 89 

VI Andover Women 110 

VII Andover Trysting-Places . . . 128 

VIII Some Men of the Olden Time . 142 



[ix] 



ERRATA 

The illustration facing page 174 should be entitled 
" The Phelps House," not " The Moses Stuart House," 
and the picture of " Old Main Street " faces page 38, 
not page 94. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Page 
Seminary Buildings (1870) . . . Frontispiece 

Shawsheen River 44< 

Old Main Street 94 

Indian Ridge 136 

Moses Stuart House 174 



i] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



I. ANDOVER HILL 

Andover Hill! are there many still 
living, I wonder, who know what those 
words meant in the old days? Pisgah, 
the Anniversary discoui'ses used to call 
it, or Sinai, or the Hill of Zion, where 
Siloah's brook did flow fast by the 
oracles of God. Oh, they used to 
compare our Hill to every height men- 
tioned in the Bible, — except, of course, 
the mountain of the temptation! 

It was not that our Hill was so very 
lofty : it was high enough to afford wide 
views of plain and river and distant de- 
lectable mountains ; high enough to get 
the full glory of sunrise and sunset and 
of the nightly hemisphere of stars ; high 

enough, also, to receive the purifying 
_ 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



and flesh-mortifying sweep of all the 
long, cold winds of winter. But when 
they called it Pisgah and Zion, they 
had rather in mind the presence there of 
Andover Theological Seminary, which 
was set on a hill in men's thoughts as 
IS no similar institution in these widely 
different days. 

On that broad-topped hill there was 
a row of three severely rectangular brick 
buildings, extending north and south; 
a long, wide common, with lines of 
young elms along the straight, gravel 
walks; and opposite the Seminary 
buildings, on the other side of the com- 
mon, a row of simple but dignified 
white colonial houses where the pro- 
fessors lived. Behind these, and stretch- 
ing off toward the brow of the Hill, were 
the wide fields and gardens where " the 
sacred plow employed " those " awful 

m 



ANDOVER HILL 



fathers of mankind " — through the 
hired man. There were also on the Hill 
the recitation-hall of Phillips Academy, 
and a few other buildings; but the 
heart of Old Andover was the Semi- 
nary Common, over which trod intent 
black figures, passing between chapel 
and home or dormitory. 

Severely plain and utterly quiet An- 
dover was, but it was not stagnant. 
The tides of intellectual life ran strong 
and high. The sense of being above and 
aloof resulted there in a feeling of proud 
responsibility and zeal for serious work. 
Professors and students alike felt them- 
selves anointed kings and priests, with a 
momentous task to perform for the 
world. They did not quite think their 
Mount Zion "the joy of the whole 
earth," but their thoughts certainly 
tended in that direction. 



[3] 



OLD ANDOVEE DAYS 



In 1810 my father was called to An- 
dover from a pastorate at New Haven, 
to be professor of Greek and Hebrew; 
and there most of his children were born. 
The Hill, with its great common, its 
severe buildings, its monastic human 
figures, made up our whole child world. 
Sometimes, indeed, we strayed as far 
as Indian Ridge or the banks of the 
Shawsheen at Abbott's Village ; but such 
rare excursions merely accentuated our 
seclusion. Our only associates were the 
other " Hill children," sons and daugh- 
ters of professors and of the principal of 
the Academy, with now and then, as a 
rare exception, some favored Academy 
boy. We never went to the circus or to 
dancing-school ; but we were always ex- 
pected to take our silent and attentive 
part in whatever went on of services or 
celebrations within those studious walls. 



[^] 



ANDOVER HILL 



The buildings upon the Hill formed 
so characteristic a setting for our life, 
that I will try to picture them somewhat 
in detail. The middle one of the three 
Seminary buildings, which we called 
the Chapel, looked very much as it does 
to-day, except that instead of the pres- 
ent tower it had a small round cupola. 
It was in those days divided into three 
stories instead of two, as now, the floors 
having since been shifted, and the win- 
dows of the middle story blocked up. 
This building had many uses. On the 
right, the chapel filled the lower story; 
and above was the library, which, with 
its books, portraits, and busts, was a 
most attractive place. The left side of 
the building was occupied by recitation- 
rooms. 

The dormitories, Abbott and Bartlett 

Halls, though externally very much 
— 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



what they are at present, by their do- 
mestic arrangements, or by the absence 
of such things, conduced to a Spartan 
simplicity of life and character on the 
part of the students. There was no 
water in the buildings ; the young men 
must bring it in their pitchers from out- 
side. There was no steam heat; they 
must tend their own stoves, carrying 
their fuel from a wood-pile which at first 
was not even protected from the rain 
and snow, up the steep flights of stairs 
to their rooms. They had to make their 
own beds, do their own sweeping, and 
fill their own lamps. But there was 
little complaint among the theologues of 
eighty years ago. They had done the 
same things in college; and most of 
them had been in the habit of perform- 
ing similar offices at home. That these 
hardships, which students of to-day 

m 



ANDOVER HILL 



would doubtless think severe, did no 
harm to those then subjected to them, is 
proved by the quality of the graduates 
sent out by Andover in those early days. 
Behind the Seminary buildings 
proper was the structure known as the 
" Commons." It was well named, for 
nothing could be more common than 
both the outside and the inside of the 
building. Every vestige of the low, two- 
storied brown house is gone now; but 
there it stood, just back of the chapel, 
year after year, spreading their only 
table for scores of young men studying 
for the ministry. I have no doubt that it 
was kept as well as many similar eating- 
houses, — perhaps it was kept better; 
but it had this peculiarity: the cheap, 
poor food it offered was not accom- 
panied by the pleasant words that are 
as the honeycomb, sweet to the soul and 

m 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



health to the bones. Instead there were 
disquisitions on Edwards and Emmons, 
on eternal punishment and redemption 
by free grace. Think of the clatter of 
knives and forks, dealing with tough 
meat and soggy vegetables, to the ac- 
companiment of these and kindred 
themes ! 

There used to be a story — but, mind 
you, no physician or nurse has been 
found who will swear to its truth — 
about a young man who, during one of 
the dietetic spasms to which the Com- 
mons was subject, when meat was ex- 
eluded and molasses substituted in its 
place, had some ailment for which, in 
accordance with the medical practise of 
those days, the doctor resorted to blood- 
letting. All the skill of the physician 
could draw from his veins nothing but a 
sweet, thick liquid resembling syrup! 

m 



ANDOVER HILL 



The long tables, the blue and white 
dishes, the capacious water-pitchers, the 
dingy tumblers, the patched table-cloths, 
the piles of brown and white bread, the 
crackers, mush, and buckwheat, the 
poor joints and cheap vegetables, have 
passed away ; and so have most of those 
who ate of them. But there remains the 
memory of the quaintness and chill of 
the old dining-room, of the sun strag- 
gling in through the little cracked win- 
dow-panes, of the shadows made on the 
low walls by the swaying boughs and 
glancing leaves of the near elm-trees; 
and through the hush which the years 
have dropped upon the place there come 
tolling in the warning notes of the soft 
chapel bell. 

At the north end of the Common stood 
a plain stone building called the carpen- 
ter shop. It was later the residence of 
— 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Professor and Mrs. Stowe, and now 
forms part of the Phillips Inn. The 
purpose for which it had been built 
proves that the Andover authorities 
early caught some dim foreshadowing 
of modern theories of physical devel- 
opment. The plain statement that a 
healthy body makes a healthy mind and 
a healthy soul, would probably have 
been considered in the Andover of those 
days as rank heresy. Indeed, the body 
and the soul were often looked upon as 
the two ends of a seesaw, so to speak, 
of which, when one was up, the other 
was necessarily down. It was vaguely 
felt, however, that the students, in spite 
of the fact that they had to take care of 
their own rooms, and although their serv- 
ices were requisitioned on occasion to 
chop Professor Porter's wood, or to mow 
some other professor's hay, yet, take 



ANDOVER HILL 



the year through, did not get a sufficient 
amount of exercise. Mr. Bartlett, him- 
self a man of iron frame and iron nerves, 
with a common sense that told him how 
much these had contributed to his suc- 
cess, could easily understand that physi- 
cal strength would increase a man's 
effectiveness, even in the holy ministry. 
A project adapted to strengthen the 
bodies of the students he readily agreed 
to further; and a stone shell of a build- 
ing was erected, and within its great 
bare walls there were carried benches, 
tools, limiber, and all the et cetera that 
go to make up a regular carpenter shop. 
Thither were led — for I am sure very 
few ever went there of their own accord 
— the Juniors, Middlers, and Seniors, 
to grow into the full stature of a glori- 
ous, rounded manhood. And what do 

you suppose the authorities chose as 
— 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



among the chief objects, in the construc- 
tion of which the theological students, 
weary, perhaps, from a lecture on the 
future of the wicked after death, should 
relax their minds and invigorate their 
bodies? You will hardly believe me 
when I assure you that they were set to 
making — coffins! There you have a 
theological consistency worthy of John 
Calvin himself! 

Very ludicrous pictures come up be- 
fore me, of scenes which we children 
used to see there, when we stole in dur- 
ing work hours, to adorn our straight 
hair with the beautiful shining curls of 
shavings. There were pale, puzzled, 
weary faces, bending over corners that 
wouldn't fit, and over boards that were 
too long or too short, too narrow or too 
wide. There were failures to hit nails 
on the head ; there was dulling of saws, 

[Til 



ANDOVER HILL 



breaking of hatchets, and rasping of 
files; — oh, the ignorance and incom- 
patibility are as funny to remember as 
they must have been hard to bear! To 
the participants there was nothing amus- 
ing about the scene. Each man was as 
solemn as if the cofBn he was making 
were his own. We hear of theological 
workshops! Here was one, the like of 
which had never existed before, and 
probably can never exist again. Ham- 
mered in were the Greek and Hebrew, 
homiletics and ecclesiastical history, 
election, free grace, natural depravity, 
and justification by faith, — hammered 
down tight, and the nail clinched on 
the other side. 

Of the row of professors' houses on 
the west side of the Common, the one at 
the southern end was that built for my 
father. Mr. Bartlett had bought for the 

[Til 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Seminary the six acres of land on which 
it was to stand, and had given my father 
carte blanche to "build a dwelling house 
thereon according to his pleasure." The 
house, though perfectly simple, was 
large and commodious. Behind and 
about it were the barns, sheds, and store- 
rooms made necessary by the conditions 
of existence in those primitive times. It 
should be remembered that the produc- 
tion of the necessaries of life was then 
much less specialized than it is to-day. 
We had to keep our own cow, and our 
own hens. We had to raise and store 
many of our supplies. We depended 
besides upon our own horse and car- 
riage. All this necessitated, even for a 
professor in a theological seminary, a 
certain amount of stock, implements, 
and service; and it called for an array 
of outbuildings which have since fallen 



ANDOVER HILL 



into disuse and have been torn do^vn. 
When the estabhshment was finished, 
and Mr. Bartlett came to inspect it, he 
said in his simple, brief manner, — 

" This is exactly such a house as a 
professor ought to have." 

The house was painted a pure and 
austere white. In fact, there was no 
building on the Hill which was painted 
any other shade, until my sister and I, 
as young ladies, having seen, on a visit 
to Newburyport, that the fashionable 
color for houses was then a delicate 
drab, went to the painter, procured a 
sample, and on our return to Andover, 
without consulting our parents, ordered 
our house painted in the worldly shade. 
My father only looked at us and 
drew his red silk handkerchief across 
his mouth. 

No separate view of the house as it 

fill 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



used to be is in existence; and various 
changes and additions, with the removal 
of the outbuildings, have made the pres- 
ent structure almost unrecognizable. 
Some idea of how it used to look may- 
be obtained from the view opposite 
p. 38, in which it is the last house on 
the left. 

Such a home as it was for children I 
The sheds and haymows, the three yards, 
the fields and gardens, afforded fine 
places for play. And then the fruit- 
trees! They bore cherries and plums, 
apples and pears and quinces, such as 
Massachusetts can no longer boast. 

The next house to the north of us was 
for some time the Mansion House, of 
which I shall speak later. In the wide 
space between there was built in 1832 
a brick building called the " book store." 
It is the middle building in the view op- 



ANDOVER HILL 



posite p. 38. Successive firms of printers 
made it their headquarters; and there 
many of my father's books were pub- 
hshed. The house to the north of the 
Mansion House was the residence of 
Professor Woods. It was a box-hke 
building, very square and plain. In the 
old days it was without blinds. 

In striking contrast to this house was 
the one beyond it, which was occupied 
by the professors of rhetoric. It was 
presented to the Seminary by Mr. Bart- 
lett, who had given Dr. Griffin, who was 
to be the first professor to occupy it, the 
same privilege that he gave my father, 
of building his house to suit himself. Dr. 
Griffin, who had come from Philadel- 
phia, was a man of cultivated and expen- 
sive tastes. He built so many of these 
tastes into his house that the expense 
not only astonished and mortified Dr. 

2 [17] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Griffin himself, but was a source of 
tr,ouble to every one concerned in the 
affair. It is said that after signing 
check after check to pay bills connected 
with the construction of the house, Mr. 
Bartlett gave Squire Farrar, the treas- 
urer, authority to pay whatever further 
bills might be presented, and forbade 
him ever to let him know how much the 
dwelling cost. The crowning extrava- 
gance of Dr. Griffin, to Andover minds, 
was his having put upon the parlor walls 
a paper which cost a dollar a roll. When 
he was remonstrated with for this lavish 
outlay, he tried to cover his mistake by 
ordering another paper, at twenty-five 
cents a roll, and having that put on over 
the other, — still at the expense of Mr. 
Bartlett. Dr. Griffin stayed in An- 
dover less than two years, when he was 

permitted to return to the elegance of 

_ 



ANDOVER HILL 



Philadelphia. The house was then as- 
signed to Dr. Porter, who occupied it 
through the years of my childhood. It 
is often spoken of as the " Phelps 
house," sometimes as the " president's 
house"; and it has always been the 
handsomest among the residences of 
the Andover professors. 

Next beyond this house was a low, 
unpretentious building occupied by the 
Seminary steward. Next in order stood 
the large, dignified square house occu- 
pied by Samuel Farrar, or Squire 
Farrar, as he was always called. This 
man was the " honest treasurer " whom 
Holmes called " the good old, wrinkled, 
immemorial squire." In his yard was 
a small building used as the treasurer's 
office. The house is still in existence, 
but has been moved back to the western 
brow of the Hill. 



[19] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



During my early childhood this was 
the last house in the row opposite the 
Common; but in 1833 a brick house was 
added at the end. This was the home 
first of Dr. Skinner, and afterwards for 
many years of Professor Park. 

A few other buildings not in this row 
must have mention. Nearly opposite 
my father's was the house of Dr. Mur- 
dock. This was a simple structure with 
a gable roof. In the yard was an old- 
fashioned well, with a sweep; and be- 
side the well hung a gourd, for use as 
a drinking-cup. In this house Oliver 
Wendell Holmes was for some time a 
boarder. My most vivid remembrance 
of him as a boy is as he stood by the 
well-sweep, drinking from the gourd. 

A little way down the hill toward 
Boston from Dr. Murdock's, and on the 
same side of the street, stood Shipman's 



ANDOVER HILL 



store. Here we were often sent on er- 
rands, and here we spent our pennies 
on candy, sweet-flag, and slippery-elm. 
Even the stronghold of trade in the 
guise of this little country store was in 
Andover made to pay tribute to the re- 
quirements of theology and learning; 
for in this same building my father had 
his printing-press. This may seem a 
strange possession for an Andover pro- 
fessor; but when my father began to 
teach Hebrew, he found that he must 
write a Hebrew grammar, there being 
nothing adequate on the subject in the 
English language. When the grammar 
was written, because there were no He- 
brew characters in American printing- 
offices, and no printers capable of setting 
up Hebrew type, he had to solicit con- 
tributions, buy a press, and import He- 
brew type. He even set up some of the 

fill 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



grammar himself, until he could train 
compositors capable of doing such work. 
As the first home of what was called, 
from the chief contributor, the Codman 
Press, Shipman's store has my lasting 
interest. 

On the eastern side of the Common 
was the Academy building where my 
brothers went to school. It was a plain 
brick building with a cupola. In the 
corner of the Academy yard was the res- 
idence of the principal, — a dear house 
to me, for I was very fond of Mrs. 
Adams, and one of the Adams children 
was my most intimate girl friend. Just 
the other side of the Academy building 
stood the modest schoolhouse where Miss 
Davis taught the little girls living on the 
Hill. On a street running west from 
Main street, close by Squire Farrar's 
house, was a row of homely barracks 

[22] 



ANDOVER HILL 



which served as dormitories for the boys 
of Phillips Academy. 

It will be seen that the buildings on 
Andover Hill had almost all of them an 
academic, and, in many cases a theolog- 
ical association. There was one house, 
however, which brought us in some de- 
gree into contact with the big outer 
world. This was the Mansion House, 
built by Judge Phillips in Revolution- 
ary days. Standing in the line of houses 
opposite the Common, it was much the 
largest and stateliest among them. It 
was for years separated from our house 
only by grass and trees, so that we could 
see it from our windows. We heard 
tales of the public offices and high social 
position of Judge Phillips. We looked 
with awe on the windows of the room 
where Madam Phillips had received the 
great George Washington. The house 

[23] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



had become an inn ; and before it every 
afternoon drew up the stage that was 
our only public means of connection 
with Boston and the world at large. 

Living in my father's family was a 
strong, noble-minded New England 
woman who occupied at once the place 
of " help " and of friend. In her youth 
she had been a member of Madam Phil- 
lips' household; and our earliest hours 
of story-telling were filled with descrip- 
tions of the grandeur of the Mansion, 
and with accounts of the fine doings that 
had taken place there in its palmy days. 
Our own home was plain with an almost 
Puritanic severity; but at Madam Phil- 
lips' there had been such silver, such 
table-cloths, such pomp and ceremony of 
gubernatorial life! Who had the finest 
lace that human fingers ever wove? 
Whose muslin frills and bordered caps 

[IT] 



ANDOVER HILL 



were a miracle of plaiting? Whose stiff 
silks and heavy, broidered satins came 
rustling down to us through the years? 
Who was the lady of Andover Hill, to 
whom the great and the small alike did 
reverence? Madam Phoebe Phillips. 
Her youthful romance was one of the 
very few to come to our carefully 
guarded ears. The attic window where 
she had prayed for her husband when he 
was away at the war was one of the 
Meccas of our youthful imagination. 
Indeed, so real a woman was Madam 
Phoebe Phillips to my childhood, that 
although I know she died before I was 
born, I cannot divest myself of the idea 
that I saw her as a living woman, and 
that she led me with other little girls 
over her great house, showing us the dif- 
ferent rooms, and pointing out with 

pride the crepe-hung chair in which 
— 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



George Washington had once sat 
down. 

The dignity of Madam Phillips' social 
station, and the munificence of her char- 
ities, certainly counteracted in some de- 
gree the unworldly traditions in which 
we were brought up ; and under the cir- 
cumstances such an influence was per- 
haps not unwholesome. Yet this stately 
dame, we were told, had had for the es- 
tablishment of the Seminary a deep per- 
sonal concern. She had contributed of 
her property toward its establishment. 
In the southeast parlor, the very room 
once dignified by the presence of Wash- 
ington, she had assembled the company 
which had inaugurated the new institu- 
tion. And her chief consolation in dy- 
ing was that she could see from her win- 
dow the Seminary buildings, and realize 
that within them thirty-six students 



ANDOVER HILL 



were already gathered. Thus the influ- 
ence of the Mansion House was not so 
antagonistic as might have been ex- 
pected to that of the other buildings 
with which we were surrounded. 

Andover Hill, it must be admitted, 
was in some ways a strange place for 
children to grow up. We were not the 
center of interest, with our environment 
carefully adapted to every need and 
whim. Even the old adage, " Children 
should be seen and not heard," was 
amended in Andover to " Children 
should not be heard, and should be seen 
only on stated occasions, such as family 
prayers and Sabbath services." But, 
after all, a measure of repression has its 
educational advantages; the sense of 
pride is a comfortable inheritance; the 
gardens, fields, and woods were near 
and free ; and, as I have said, there were 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



thirty-two of us children together there. 
Besides, is it not an advantage to be born 
and bred where one unconsciously im- 
bibes the deep conviction that it is vul- 
gar — not perhaps to be rich — but at 
least to spend one's life and thoughts in 
slaving after wealth? Yes: it is some- 
thing to be born on a Hill. 



[28] 



II 

THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

Among the most marked and charac- 
teristic institutions of the Andover of 
my childhood was the Puritan Sabbath. 
The day threw its long, gloomy shadow 
before it, beginning with religious exer- 
cises in school on Saturday morning. 
For three long hours our teacher, Miss 
Davis, held us prisoners over Bible les- 
sons, and over the mystical pages of 
the Westminster Shorter Catechism. 
Hymns we learned also, and sang; the 
quavering of Miss Davis' thin, cracked 
voice comes back to me through the 
years. The singing was always followed 
by a prayer. Of this nothing remains 
to me but the wonder how she could 

always time her " Amen " so as to pro- 
_ 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



nounce the last syllable precisely with 
the last stroke of twelve from the chapel 
belfry. 

That stroke set us free, and gave us 
our holiday afternoon. This was as 
reckless and merry a time, as gay and 
careless, on Andover Hill, as anywhere 
else, — perhaps even more so, since it 
was in contrast with so much that seemed 
to press us down and hem us in. All the 
swiftly moving hours now belonged to 
us, until the sun shot its last rays from 
the long, low, mountain-bound horizon; 
but the moment its disk dropped below 
the hills, the time was God's, and of 
course was sacred. " Remember the 
sabbath day, to keep it holy," was often 
written in letters of purple and gold all 
over the western sky. No matter where 
we were or what we were doing, the 
least infringement upon this Sabbath 

[1h 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

time was a sin, and was treated as such. 
" Be home at sunset," — these words 
come ringing down to me now, stem and 
commanding, as they sounded then. 

There was a remarkable similarity in 
the family habits and customs of the 
Seminary faculty. We cherished the feel- 
ing that we were one body, separated 
from the rest of the world. On Satur- 
day night, except in case of illness, not 
a light burned in any of our dwellings 
after nine; for Saturday night was the 
preparation for a day of rest. On Sun- 
day morning one bell might have sum- 
moned us all to our early breakfast. At 
nearly the same moment there went up 
from the family altars the prolonged 
prayers ; and in precisely the same way 
the solemn stillness which followed the 
" Amen " settled down upon us all. 
There came a Sunday hush upon every 

fsTi 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



child's voice, a softening of the step, a 
smile for a laugh, a pent, scared feeling, 
as if Satan in bodily shape was waiting 
near to gobble up any poor, unlucky 
sinner who should venture ever so little 
way from the strait and narrow path. 
I doubt whether there dawned upon us 
a glimmering of the great and beautiful 
truths the day was intended to shadow 
forth. 

Let me, however, make a single ex- 
ception. To my father, Sunday was the 
social day of the week. Study was set 
aside. A chapter or two in his Hebrew 
Bible, or an epistle in the Greek Testa- 
ment, — and the remainder of the day 
was literally rest. In the morning, for 
an hour or two before breakfast, he 
walked up and down the garden he loved 
so well, with quick steps, head erect, 
arms swinging, every muscle of his tall. 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

thin frame in active motion. Bent ap- 
parently upon the one object of secur- 
ing his exercise, he yet had eyes and ears 
for everything that surrounded him. 
Not a flower had budded or bloomed in 
the trim little beds of which he had the 
general care, not a vegetable had grown 
or ripened since his last visit, but he 
knew all about it. Very quick and keen 
his senses were, sources of great pleasure 
to him, as well as of much pain. In sum- 
mer he allowed us to pick flowers and 
carry them with us to church ; but they 
must always be of the rarest and best, 
for we were laying them upon God's 
altar. Under the drawing-room win- 
dows grew some damask roses. Every 
Sunday morning while they were in 
blossom he gathered them and gave 
them to us, always with some apprecia- 
tive word and one of his own beaming 
_ __ 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



smiles. The fragrance of those roses is 
around me now, making a June in my 
memory of those Andover Sabbath days. 
At nine in the morning we children 
all left our homes, wending our way 
across the bare, open Common to the 
schoolhouse. It always seemed as if 
Sunday had gone before, and had crept 
in and taken possession of our familiar 
schoolroom, and was waiting for us 
there. We children on Andover Hill 
had, in a sense, fewer of what are called 
" rehgious privileges " than any other 
set of beings out of heathendom. It 
must be remembered that we were not 
a legitimate part of the secluded reli- 
gious, literary life to which we were at- 
tached. The founders of the Seminary 
had made no provision for the young 
growth that had thrust itself without 
leave into the very midst. Pastorless, 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

the life and heart found only in an ac- 
tive, working church wanting, we grew 
up with no personal interest in our 
chapel or attachment to it. Sabbath- 
school was not introduced among us 
until it had become a settled institu- 
tion elsewhere; and it failed to influ- 
ence and mold us as such an institu- 
tion should. Our teachers were students 
from the Seminary; and the transitori- 
ness of our connection with them les- 
sened the good we might have received. 
Our recitations were brief. Then, to the 
slow tolling of the bell, we were marched 
along the road back of the Seminary to 
the chapel, the superintendent in front, 
we all following decorously, our teachers 
beside us. 

In the chapel of those days there was 
nothing of old Solomon's magnificence. 
The walls were dingy blue, the pews. 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



gallery, and desk were yellow white. 
Between the windows tarnished cande- 
labra swung out, holding long, thin 
tallow dips, which had a sacerdotal habit 
of dropping large, round, hot drops 
upon unsanctified heads. A small 
cushion in the pew of the invaUd pro- 
fessor, Dr. Porter, was, I think, the only 
one upon the hard, bare seats; and the 
cold floor was without a carpet. To 
make amends, there were plenty of 
Bibles and " Watts and Select " hymn- 
books. In winter a great iron stove 
on one side of the pulpit with pipes 
running around the entire chapel formed 
the only means of heating. Into this 
the sexton, who had a seat near the 
wood-box, on the other side of the pul- 
pit, was continually shoving large sticks 
of well-seasoned wood. With the hot 
coals, foot-stoves were filled; and pass- 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

ing these stoves from one to another 
made the principal diversion during the 
service. 

The front pew on the right-hand side 
as you entered was Dr. Porter's. Every 
Sunday until sickness kept him away, 
he was there with his quaint little wife. 
He was a tall man, with a large head 
covered with stiff, gray hair; a pale face; 
immobile eyes, deep-set; and a mouth 
drawn as if from suppressed pain. He 
was a man who never wandered within 
the precincts of our child world; we be- 
held him from afar, venerated him, and 
always thought of him with a yellow 
bandana tied about his throat, and a 
long, dark cloth coat hanging from his 
narrow shoulders. 

Dr. Woods sat next, a noble-looking 
man, decidedly the handsomest member 
of the faculty. It was a saying in those 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



old times, that no man could be a pro- 
fessor at Andover who was under six 
feet in height. Dr. Woods was every 
inch of this, and of rather stalwart pro- 
portions, which added to his personal 
dignity. His head was round, and sin- 
gularly even in its development; his 
forehead was high, sloping a little back- 
ward; his hair thin, gray, and always 
cut short ; his large eyes of a quiet blue ; 
his other features rather delicate than 
pronounced; and the whole presence 
that of a slow, quiet, dignified, entirely 
reliable man. There were some of us 
who had an undefinable dread of him 
because we heard him called " Old 
School." What that meant probably 
none of us knew; but we had a dim 
idea that it had something to do with 
his being a nephew of Cotton Mather, 
and that it made us, in his presence, par- 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

ticularly on Sunday, practical illustra- 
tions of original sin, native depravity, 
free agents gone far astray. And yet 
not one of the grave, preoccupied men 
by whom we were surrounded had a 
pleasanter word for us, or a more kindly 
smile. 

Professor Stuart sat third in order. 
Four-fifths of the year he carried his 
long blue cloth cloak on his arm to 
church. Spreading it carefully over the 
back of the pew, and sitting on it, he 
was the most attentive and the most rest- 
less listener there. To keep still seemed 
to be a physical impossibility to him. 
If the sermon was poor, his impatience 
showed itself in shrugs, in opening and 
shutting his large white hands, in mov- 
ing in his seat, and in a lengthened 
face pitiable to see. If it was good, no 
one doubted his appreciation, or the 

Til 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



social feeling which made him wish to 
share his enjoyment. At the utterance 
of any especially pertinent remark, he 
would often rise in his seat, and, turn- 
ing round upon the young men, his stu- 
dents, draw his red silk handkerchief 
across his mouth several times, express- 
ing in every feature the keenness of 
his pleasure. If he differed theologi- 
cally from the sentiments uttered, no 
words could have expressed his dissent 
more strongly than did his looks and 
gestures. 

In the next pew was Dr. Murdock, 
an impassive man, living far more in the 
past than in the present, caring little for 
the pulpit utterances of the day in com- 
parison with those of centuries ago. 
Small, with delicate features, thin brown 
hair, and brown eyes, he seemed to us 
like a hermit who had wandered away 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

from his cell. A great scholar we were 
told he was, with all the history of the 
world at his ready command; and we 
looked upon him as we should have 
looked upon a walking cyclopedia, not 
much pleased with the binding it showed 
us, or in the least attracted by the won- 
derful lore treasured within. He was 
to us a literary curiosity, and nothing 
more ; therefore we heeded him less than 
any other of the professors. 

John Adams and Samuel Farrar 
occupied, seats on the left of the pulpit. 
John Adams was principal of Phillips 
Academy, thus holding a post to us 
much more important than that held 
by any other of the dignified men in the 
assembly. Yet he had not the dignified 
look of these other men. Shorter and 
stouter, with a florid complexion, a large 
nose, and a live blue eye, he stepped, up 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



the broad aisle with the carriage of one 
used to command. Before him he held 
a great ivory-headed cane, which came 
ringing down into the corner of his well- 
filled pew with an emphasis not to be 
misunderstood. 

Samuel Farrar was not a common 
man to any of us. With his delicate 
face, his long gray hair falling back 
from a rather peculiar forehead, a shy, 
retiring manner, and a very sweet, 
grave expression, even of his hands, he 
was to us by turns, Moses, David, Isaiah, 
John whom the Blessed One loved — 
any and almost every Biblical saint. 
He was a responsible man, carrying on 
his shoulders not only all the great pe- 
cuniary interests of the Seminary, but 
also, seemingly, the responsibility for 
its theology. He listened to every word 
spoken in the small wooden pulpit as if 

[42! 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

for one and all he must give account at 
the last great day. 

What a peculiar audience that was! 
With the mysteries all unfolded, the 
glass lifted, seeing face to face, how, I 
wonder, do they feel about their old 
differences now? 

Services ended, we filed out. The 
students by the door went first. Pew 
after pew was emptied, one by one, 
slowly, solemnly, as if it were a funeral, 
and somebody in the entry were beckon- 
ing to us in turn. Then, still more sol- 
emnly and slowly, we walked over the 
broad, graveled pathways homeward, 
famiUes silently by themselves. If se- 
clusion were in truth sanctity, we were 
all near heaven on this holy day. 

An intermission of two hours deco- 
rously passed at home, with a cold din- 
ner and a pious book, another walk 

US] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



along the narrow foot-paths across the 
Common, more prayers and psahn-sing- 
ing, and our church Sabbath was over. 

During the vacations of the Theolog- 
ical Seminary, the chapel in which we 
ordinarily " went to meeting " was 
closed; and we Hill children were sent 
to the Old South Church. This made 
one of our infrequent holidays, — a time 
to look forward to with longing, and back 
upon with regret. A grave little pro- 
cession we were, as we dropped into line 
from house after house, each child with 
a decorous basket in the hand, and each 
basket filled with some choice Sunday 
dainty expressly prepared for the occa- 
sion. We were conscious, too, of some 
extra touch of toilet; it may have been 
a fresh ribbon for a sash, an embroidered 
pair of pantalettes, or the new hat which 
had been impatiently kept for the spring 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

vacation. Even the boys made them- 
selves a shade more jaunty, tipped their 
caps at a little greater angle, brushed 
their cropped hair until its pomatumed 
surface shone with a higher brilliancy, 
and polished their boots until Day & 
Martin might have been glad to send 
them as advertisements around the 
world. 

This Old South Church was typical, 
in its architecture, of the meeting-houses 
of its time. It had been built in 1788, 
and it remained until the building of the 
present church in 1860. It is therefore 
not difficult to recall it as it was, with 
its galleries around three sides of the 
house, its square pews, — those near the 
pulpit being reserved for deaf people 
and deacons, — its high pulpit with the 
round sounding-board suspended above, 
and over it, in great gilt letters on a 

[IT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



black ground, the solemn words, " Holi- 
ness becometh Thine house, O Lord, 
forever." The size and prominence of 
that " O " gave it something mystical. 
Over it our childish eyes traveled. Sab- 
bath after Sabbath, while we wondered 
whether it was not a round in Jacob's 
ladder, up which the minister's prayers 
mounted to heaven. 

To the gallery, of course, we were 
sent, the boys to one side, the girls to the 
other. The church was a wide one; but 
was there ever a distance across which 
young eyes could not send a message, 
or young lips a smile? Our only dread 
was of the tithing-man, but my memory 
bears no record of any arrests; it may 
be that as guests we were treated with 
special indulgence. 

After morning service we were ex- 
pected to enter decorously the " noon 

[1^1 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

house," and having eaten our lunches 
with Sabbath propriety, to go to the 
vestry-room, and Hsten to a second ser- 
mon read by one of the deacons. There 
was no Sabbath-school to fill the inter- 
mission, and I am afraid we Hill chil- 
dren played truant from the regular 
gatherings oftener than our highly reli- 
gious bringing-up would have led the 
Old South community to expect. We 
were found oftener out among the 
graves in the adjoining churchyard, 
down by the pretty brook that sang its 
song all the livelong week to the ears 
of the dead as merrily as it did on Sun- 
day to us children tired with psalm- 
singing and prayer and sermon. There 
were no tithing-men out there, — only 
the blue sky, the pleasant grove, the 
birds with whom it was always God's 
day, and the flowers, one of which in 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



that holy church would have been con- 
sidered a desecration. 

The old church has gone now, and 
with it the pulpit, the sounding-board, 
the square, unpainted, straight pews, 
the solemn motto, and the storied gal- 
leries. Near by in the churchyard, sleep 
pastors and parishioners, deacons, tith- 
ing-men, constables, all together there, 
waiting peacefully for the glad resur- 
rection mom. 

What of the day remained after serv- 
ices were over was the pleasantest part 
of the whole week. There was a social 
tea, with toast, doughnuts, preserves, — 
a sort of family thanksgiving tea, dear 
to us all. Then, as on the beautiful 
yearly holiday, our father was our 
father, not the quiet, grave student, 
but a companion, talking with us, 
interested in what we were doing, ready 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

to laugh with his keen sense of amuse- 
ment at our innocent jokes, and, though 
never under any circumstances utter- 
ing one himself, enjoying them most 
of us all. 

After tea came prayers — prayers 
which were ours, for in them we all took 
part. The old mahogany bookcase, 
with its open door; the shelf holding 
seven small black and gilt Bibles, all 
alike ; the twelve brown leather " Cod- 
man's Hymns "; the tall " Scott's Fam- 
ily Bible," — all come back to me with 
a distinctness no canvas could rival. 
From these Bibles we read by turns, 
the eldest child at home droning out the 
practical reflections with which the eru- 
dite Scott finished his commentary on 
the words of Holy Writ. Then we 
sang a dear, familiar hymn to a dear, 
familiar old tune. Mear, Dundee, 

4 [49] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



St. Martin's, Old Hundred, — ladders 
these, touching heaven, up which the 
father's soul followed his deep, drawling 
notes triumphantly. The rite ended 
with a long prayer and its welcome 
" Amen." 

Then the low sun of an Andover Sab- 
bath evening glinted through the west- 
ern windows of a large upper room, 
upon a group of seven children gath- 
ered round a delicate, heaven-eyed 
mother, holding in her hand the "West- 
minster Shorter Catechism." West- 
minster was the golden clasp which 
bound those sacred hours together. We 
began and ended them over its mysteri- 
ous revelations. A hated old book it 
was to us, dog-eared, tear-blistered, full 
of restraints, chidings, and an infinite 
number of " must nots." Pity that we 
could not have seen then, as we can see 

[IT] 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

now, that, understand it or not, it was 
the stuff from which true men and 
women are made, the real old Puritan 
nourishment for sinew, muscle, and 
strong backbone! 

" Now, children," says our mother, 
looking around lovingly upon us, " I 
want you to be quiet and attentive. 
Jamie, let your sister alone! Sit here, 
at my right hand." 

Jamie darts into a chair close beside 
her, throwing an arm far out of a short 
coat-sleeve, around her neck, drawing 
down the delicate lace cap until it 
touches his brown curLs, then giving her 
a kiss so loud and hearty that we all 
laugh. 

A tap on the floor. " WiU, ' What is 
the chief end of man? ' Stand up, my 
son, and answer properly." 

" * The chief end of man,' " answers 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Will, looking over the lace cap, out of 
the window, " * is to glorify God and, en- 
joy him forever.' Look there, quick I 
I saw a bobolink ! " 

Fourteen eyes look for the bobolink. 
Another tap on the floor, and the next 
question. 

"Jamie — " But Jamie has gone. 
He is swinging on the lightning-rod, 
watching the bird. 

" My son! " sorrowfully. 

Two eyes, blue as the mother's, stray 
from the bird to meet hers. They see 
the troubled look, and a voice shouts 
merrily back, " ' The word of God 
contained — ' " 

"* Which is — '" 

" * Which is contained in the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments ' 
— Hullo, there *s his mate! See them 
on the very tip-top of that pear-tree! " 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

"Jamie I" this time with much 
authority. ^\ 

" * Is the only way ' — hear that, will 
you? " He gives a whistle that perfectly 
imitates the bird's notes, and six other 
mouths are puckered up to follow his 
example. 

"Boys!" The voice that calls from 
the window below every child knows. 
The room is the " keeping-room," name 
redolent of associations with old Con- 
necticut. There, at this hour, sits the 
father. Little heads, girls' as well as 
boys', are turned down to see a thin, 
pale face with a serio-comic expres- 
sion. One long finger points toward 
the singing bobolink, and, " Put salt on 
its tail and catch it," the professor says. 

It is leave granted. There is a scam- 
per of feet across the room, Westmin- 
ster, farewell! — but no. 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



" Come back, all of you," the mother 
says. " Don't you see, the sun is not 
down yet? " 

" It is only old Joshua commanding 
it to stand still," says Jamie, with an 
irreverent laugh, balancing his eager 
feet on the threshold. 

Bobolink blinks and carols in such 
a tempting, wicked way! — But the 
lesson begins again: 

" Moses, * What do the Scriptures 
principally teach? ' " 

" ' The Scriptures principally teach,' " 
answers a grave boy, whose large, seri- 
ous gray eyes have seen less of the bird 
than any others there, " * what man is to 
believe concerning God, and what God 
requires of man.' " 

"Elizabeth, 'What is God?'" 

Bobolink answers the question with 
one wild, long burst of praise; and just 

[IT] 



THE SABBATH OF OLD ANDOVER 

at this moment, slowly, majestically, 
down drops the big, red disk of the sun. 

A shout from the seven prisoners, 
" Go behind us, dreary old Sabbath, for 
six happy days more 1 " 

Dreary old Sabbath? We have since 
come to remember it as blessed! 



[55] 



Ill 

THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

The sons of the Andover professors 
were well cared for at Phillips Academy ; 
for the daughters, special provision was 
made in a school kept on Andover Hill 
by Mary Ayers Davis. I give her full 
name, for in the initials we one and all 
took a peculiar delight. When an auda- 
cious child was very angry she would 
first say them forward, and then, with 
saucer-like eyes that looked around 
stealthily for the cloven hoof, she would 
think them — only think them — in re- 
versed order. In saying this, I do not 
mean to give a key to the woman's char- 
acter; if the angel Gabriel could have 
been sent to stand in that little brown 

[m] 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

desk, I am sure we should have " poked 
fun" at his wings. Miss Davis had 
some of the very first requisites of the 
good teacher; and her theology was in- 
vulnerable. I do not think she could 
have heard us spell " baker " without 
impressing on us the fact that this veri- 
table baker " in Adam's fall sinned all," 
or " brier " without suggesting the 
roughnesses of predestination and free 
grace. To teach us arithmetic by the 
number of sheep on the right hand and 
goats on the left; granmiar, by an in- 
stinctive reverence for rules which could 
not be broken, and which admitted of 
no exceptions; geography, by a classi- 
fication of countries into lands irradi- 
ated by the glad gospel light, and those 
lying in the night of heathendom; read- 
ing, by the use of passages resonant with 
a power emanating from no human 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



mind, — to educate us thus was her 
task, and she performed it well. 

In appearance she was a small 
woman, with a face like a half-baked 
apple, twinkling hazel eyes, a large 
black front, and a close black cap. 
Without bodily presence, she yet man- 
aged to make us hold her in great per- 
sonal regard. I do not know that any 
child ever gave her a flower, or even an 
apple ; yet we valued her smile or word 
of approbation above rubies. If our 
lessons were well learned, we did not 
move out of the way as we saw the green 
" calash " come nodding towards the 
Hill ; but if we had missed, or if we had 
a stick of candy or a bit of cake to be 
eaten surreptitiously in school hours, 
little feet trotted nimbly in an opposite 
direction. In a way utterly unknown 
in these days, she was our conscience. 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

To US all, from the large girls in the 
back seats to the little ones in front, she 
represented, sitting demurely — nay, 
more, severely — in her desk, the Judge 
on the great white throne. 

We were early taught to read and 
spell accurately; and we were not back- 
ward in our arithmetic or geography. 
We had occasionally what would now 
be called lectures in astronomy and even 
botany. Our text-books were few, and 
had small woodcuts that would look 
quaint enough to the school children of 
to-day. Whatever else may have been 
omitted, be sure we were well taught in 
the " Westminster Shorter Catechism." 

I can see now a row of little girls 
wearing long, dark dresses, long panta- 
lettes, of the same material as the 
dresses, coming well down over strong, 
useful boots, and dark calico aprons, 

[59] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



with large, well-filled pockets ; with not 
a frill or cuff anywhere, but with bright 
eyes fixed intently on Miss Davis, and 
fidgety hands, as she asked us from 
"What is the chief end of man?" 
through the long and difficult questions 
to the very end. " What is election? " 
was a favorite with all of us; for we 
had a private understanding that it 
meant not the long, hard words we must 
repeat without misplacing a syllable, 
but that beautiful May holiday when 
the state officers were chosen, and some- 
body in Boston preached an Election 
sermon. On that day, with our pennies, 
saved by much self-denial for the occa- 
sion, in our pockets, we trooped off, a 
merry party, down to Pomp's Pond, 
and spent some of our money in " 'Lec- 
tion cake," which Dinah, Pomp's wife, 
had spread upon a table covered with a 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

snow-white cloth, before their cottage 
door. Pomp used to stand beside her, 
a large stone jug at his right hand, and 
a row of shining glasses before it, wait- 
ing for our three cents, for which he 
would dispense to us his sparkling root 
beer. An election this, well suited to 
our juvenile comprehension I 

Was it necessary, we can wonder now, 
that we should sit on straight wooden 
benches, brown and knife-chopped, with 
straight desks, brown and more knife- 
chopped, before us, not daring to move 
our tired limbs, not daring to whisper, 
rigid little automatons, every one of us? 
The ferule, and the steel thimble with- 
out a top, though never indiscriminat- 
ingly used, were conspicuous on the 
desk before us, ready for emergencies. 
The thimble was a unique help in teach- 
ing, graduating the required punish- 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



ment in a droll way. For a serious of- 
fense we received so many blows with 
the ferule — never hard ones, for Miss 
Davis had a tender heart, and loved the 
little ones committed to her charge. For 
a lesser offense, two or three snaps of 
the thimble, innocuous but salutary, 
were administered upon some part of 
the child's head. That the teacher 
would have liked to kiss away the tears 
that followed the snaps there is no 
doubt ; but she was too much of a mar- 
tinet for that, so she contented herself 
with sniffs so loud and peculiar that we 
came to consider them a natural and 
necessary part of the proceeding. 

From the entry of the schoolhouse 
opened a closet a few feet square. This 
closet held the chimney, piles of wood, 
and children's prayer-meetings. I 
doubt whether there is another closet in 



m] 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

all this wide world that could tell the 
tales this one could tell, if it had the 
gift of speech. Sent to school in all 
weathers, on stormy days we carried our 
lunch, and no royal tables ever gave half 
the enjoyment we experienced when, 
upon our well-worn and not immaculate 
desks we spread our rows of doughnuts, 
biscuits, bread, cheese, cold meats, fried 
apple pies, nuts, and pop-corn — often 
some one of us asking a blessing before, 
himgry as we were, we ate a mouthful. 
Our repast ended, — tell it not in 
Gath, — the one amusement to which 
we most naturally turned was a prayer- 
meeting. Looking back, I am at a loss 
to understand precisely how the custom 
could have originated. Prayer-meet- 
ings, under circumstances which will be 
noticed hereafter, we certainly had ; but 
they were not, one would have thought, 

[es] ~~ 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



SO attractive that we should have been 
led to imitate them. At any rate, ac- 
count for it or not, the fact remains that 
we turned to these meetings where other 
children would have resorted to noisy 
games. So many of us entered into our 
closet and shut our door, that we stood 
shoulder to shoulder in the pitch dark- 
ness of our chosen sanctuary; and there 
we lifted up our childish voices in some- 
thing which, if it was not prayer, cer- 
tainly was intended for it. On these 
occasions a number of conversions were 
supposed to have taken place; and the 
hero-worship which we paid to the new 
convert on emerging from our obscu- 
rity, had in it something so true, that I 
cannot look back upon it, even now, 
without emotion. To be sure, we were 
not free from the surprises which often 
attend these phenomena. The younger 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

among us were astonished, after such 
a miraculous event, to find the convert 
with the same hair and eyes and smile, 
and even more wonderful still, to see 
her, that very afternoon, perhaps, miss 
in her lessons, and, it may have been, 
alas I commit some overt act of naughti- 
ness which brought down upon her de- 
voted hand sundry blows from Miss 
Davis' long brown ferule. 

At the side of our little schoolhouse, 
but separated from it by a large yard, 
was PhilHps Academy. There is some- 
thing in its constitution which has been 
stable enough to preserve it to this day, 
and will probably hold it firm for years 
to come. Here it is : 

" It shall be the duty of the Master," 
so the constitution runs, " as the age and 
capacities of the scholars will admit, not 
only to instruct and establish them in 

5 [65 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



the truth of Christianity, but as early 
and diligently to inculcate upon them 
the great and important doctrines of 
the one true God, the Father, Son, and 
Holy Ghost, of the fall of man, the de- 
pravity of human nature, the necessity 
of an atonement, and of our being re- 
newed in the spirit of our minds, the 
doctrines of repentance toward God, 
and of faith toward our Lord Jesus 
Christ (in opposition to the erroneous 
and dangerous doctrine of justification 
by our own merit, or a dependence on 
self -righteousness) together with the 
important doctrines and duties of our 
Holy Christian Religion." 

Our Saturday lesson in "Westmin- 
ster Shorter Catechism " fades into in- 
significance when compared with those 
awaiting the boys in the tall brick 
building so near us. 

feel " 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

It is a wonder that with such a pon- 
derous load of theology to carry, we 
children were yet light-hearted enough 
to amuse ourselves with the regular boy 
and girl intercourse which has been in 
vogue ever since the world began; but 
there were thirty-two of us Hill chil- 
dren, and we were young. If at times, 
when we girls and our brothers parted 
company upon the Common, they to take 
the broad, graveled walk that led up to 
the imposing Academy, we to follow the 
narrow foot-path that wound away 
toward the little brown schoolhouse, 
there was forced upon us a comparison 
not wholly agreeable to our self-esteem, 
several happy ways of solacing our- 
selves were afforded by the vicinity of 
the buildings. Will it, I wonder, be con- 
sidered telling tales out of school if I 
describe a few of the opportunities of 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



which we took full advantage? Just 
back of our schoolhouse there was a 
rock, not high or lichen-covered, but 
filled with convenient crevices, in which 
small fingers dug out post-office boxes. 
There, independent of Uncle Sam, we, 
our own postmasters and mistresses, 
used to deposit various notes, some of 
which I can copy from that tablet which 
knows no erasure. 

**My dearest Love, 

"I'm going to be a minister and preach the 
gospel. Will you be the minister's wife is the fond 
hope of your loving D. S. " 

To which went back this answer : 

**I guess I won't. I don't like going to meeting 
awfully, so you must excuse yours respectfully 

"P. M." 

Here is one more : 

"Old A. is a cuss! I should like to kick him 
better than to see you on the ice to-night, which I 
hope to do. Your devoted Sam. " 

The devoted Sam dropped the note 
out of his pocket. " Old A." picked it 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

up. There was no meeting on the ice 
that night, but something else which 
neither of the young people concerned 
ever forgot. The future minister turned 
into a dishonest politician in the West, 
and ended his days in disgrace. The 
boy who used the disreputable word 
and showed such sanguinary tendencies 
grew into the gentlest and most patient 
of popular ministers, and went home 
only a few years ago to receive the 
crown of his rejoicing. 

The meetings on the ice to which 
his note invited the little private school 
pupil were among the pleasantest of 
our coeducational opportunities. The 
" meadow," remembered by all Andover 
children, was a piece of land back of 
both schoolhouses, to which we claimed 
right and title, — which, however, was 
far from being undisputed. A little 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



brook, if dammed at the proper time, 
could be made to overflow the meadow, 
and also, unfortunately, the cellars of 
contiguous houses. Phillips Academy- 
had boy engineers always ready in the 
face of law, and, as it was Andover, 
gospel, to dam it at the proper time; 
and our skating and sliding place was 
of the best. Girls upon skates were un- 
heard of then; but we had feet of our 
own, and knew well how to use them. 
Sitting on these feet, our short skirts 
tucked well out of the way, we would 
clasp in our little red-mittened hands 
a long stick held out to us by some chiv- 
alrous boy on skates. Thus prepared, 
the couples went swiftly flying over the 
smooth glare ice, happy being too tame a 
word to describe their blissful condition. 
Nor was it in winter only that our 
coeducation was carried on; summer 



THE SCHOOLS ON ANDOVER HILL 

had even more opportunities for us. 
There were Saturday afternoon meet- 
ings at Pomp's Pond, when the girls 
carried lunches, and the boys paddled 
out on rickety rafts for the pond-lilies 
that grew plentifully in the water. 
There was wading in with shoeless and 
stockingless feet, there was fishing from 
the rocks, strolling together through the 
thick, shadowless grove, picking check- 
erberry leaves, hunting wild straw- 
berries, and making wreaths of ground- 
ivy for heads which have since worn 
laurel. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes was a pupil 
at the Academy in those days. I re- 
member how small he looked, walking 
beside my three tall brothers. He used 
to mind being so short; but no one else 
thought the less of him for it, he was 
always so good-natured and merry. 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Never for a moment suppose that Old 
Andover gave its children only gloom 
and a severe, monastic life! We had 
prayer and catechism, rigid rules to 
keep, and little change of scene; but 
in our veins strong young blood ran 
riot, from our happy hearts merry mis- 
chief bubbled out continually, blithe 
songs filled the still Andover air, and 
bright-eyed, sunny faces gladdened the 
student at every turn. It seems to me 
now, in looking back, as if we were all 
of us, Phillips Academy boys and girls 
of the humble private school, God's 
smile upon the isolated, exclusive, rather 
gloomy life of the grave Seminarians, 
the sunlight coming in through the 
dim, cloistered windows, making their 
lives more cheerful, and therefore more 
effective. 



[72] 



IV 

ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

Every evening in the week had, on An- 
dover Hill, its occasional religious or 
literary meeting. On certain Monday- 
nights was held the " Monthly Concert 
of Prayer for Foreign Missions." To 
go to this meeting was as obligatory 
upon us as to be found in our chapel 
seats on the Sabbath. With it no 
worldly business or pleasure was ever 
allowed to interfere. Punctually when 
that bell (it used in old times to strike 
the note A) gave the first warning 
sound, dressed in suits which were a sort 
of compromise between the tempered 
frivolity of the week and the solemnity 
of the Sabbath costume, we started, as 

[¥1 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



families, for two long, worship-filled 
hours. 

As we tripped over the quiet Common 
or under the arched elms, we children 
felt a freedom about these not quite 
Sabbatical occasions which we always 
enjoyed. The heathen were a great way 
off, and a devotional frame of mind did 
not seem of any great consequence as 
far as their conversion was concerned. 
And then the moonlight or the starlight, 
the long, flecked, curious shadows on 
the broad graveled walks, the little 
groups dropping into line here and 
there, and the occasional merry greet- 
ings — these things were very week- 
day-like, and full of human interest. 

Our chapel was but dimly lighted. 
The tallow dips in the candelabra threw 
only a few poor, scared beams down 
upon the sitter directly beneath them. 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

They often, guttering and sputtering 
as was their wont, dropped also some- 
thing far less agreeable. Upon the 
faded red velvet covering of the pulpit 
stood three branched candlesticks, which 
always had for me a wonderfully holy 
association. They were kept, when not 
in use, in a small closet in the entry. 
Scores of times I have opened the door 
and peeped in at them with awed curi- 
osity. They were, I fancied, made after 
the very pattern David gave to Solo- 
mon for that other altar: "Even the 
weight for the candlesticks of gold, and 
for their lamps of gold, by weight for 
every candlestick, and for the lamps 
thereof." 

Imagine the room, dingy even in sun- 
light, thus dimly illuminated, and see 
us gathering demurely to our appointed 
seats. One of the professors generally 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



took charge of the meeting; and I do 
not think the exercises differed much 
from what they might be to-day. But 
to this there was one great exception. 
Mission work is now an accompHshed 
fact; then it was only a prayer, or at 
best a hope ; the results were all hidden. 
Yet I doubt if even with the record of 
to-day any more interest is awakened, 
or any greater certainty felt that it is 
a God-appointed institution. Never a 
shade of doubt or questioning crept 
into the opening prayer. The men who 
led the meeting were in earnest as 
men, and as full of beautiful faith as 
little children. Reports were brought 
in from every mission station, but so few 
and so weak were the laborers, fight- 
ing single-handed against principalities 
and powers, against the rulers of dark- 
ness, and spiritual wickedness in high 

[76] 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

places, and so slender were the results 
to be reported, that the wonder is, how 
sensible men could rise and go through 
the meager detail, expecting to arouse 
the hearer's sympathy, or even gain the 
assent of his common sense as to the 
propriety of continuing efforts appar- 
ently so fruitless. And yet I suppose 
that there were always at least a dozen 
among the men sitting on those hard 
seats, listening in that still, dim room, 
who felt that every story told might, 
and probably would, come true in their 
own lives, and express the result of all 
their work, their prayers, their self- 
abnegation. Richards and Spaulding, 
Goodell and King, Poor and Smith, sat 
there and listened, and yet went into the 
whitened field, bound up their harvest 
sheaves, and have gone home with them, 
richly laden. 

irT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



I am not surprised as I look back 
upon these meetings that so much was 
demanded from prayer and music, the 
one in the way of comfort, the other as 
a means of arousing hope. Whether the 
hymn 

"From Greenland's icy mountains," 

and others similarly filled with mission- 
ary associations, were extant then, I do 
not remember, but 

"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun," 

certainly was, and when it rolled out to 
the tune of " Old Hundred," it is no 
wonder that lips dumb at other times 
joined in the strain. It was like a 
clarion sounding the joy of certain vic- 
tory, suggesting that though the poor 
dead warriors lay stiff and stark upon 
the field, the glorious banner of Jesus, 
King of Hosts, was still flung out to the 
breeze. 



78 ] 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

Tuesday evening brought the " So- 
ciety of Inquiry." Knowing that the 
objects of inquiry were questions of re- 
ligious interest, we cared less to see the 
large windows of our chapel glimmer 
with their dull lights. Still we went 
often, and listened to things which were 
no doubt good, but which, shame to our 
unregenerate hearts, failed to interest 
us, or call forth in us any deep sympathy. 

On Wednesday evening the lights 
struggled out again, and the bell tolled, 
but now to summon only the professors 
and students to a " conference meeting." 
It was a prayer-meeting, naturally; 
and, as I understood it, — of course, I 
never was present, — it was a social, 
informal gathering where the mental 
and moral needs of the students came 
under the teachers' kind supervision. 
Of the depth and height and breadth 

[tT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



of the needs of their hearts, I doubt 
whether even the faintest suspicion ever 
dawned upon the minds of those devoted 
men. 

Thursday evening came the " Porter 
Rhetorical." That was the occasion we 
looked forward to and back upon. On 
Thursday we watched daylight fade, 
and evening shadows creep on, and al- 
most counted the moments that brought 
nearer our intellectual treat. We were 
to hear orations and a debate, perhaps 
a poem! And in all these we should 
feel a certain dash of life and worldli- 
ness, very taking to us secluded ones. 
At these rhetoricals, I suppose, weapons 
were forged which have since done great 
work on the broad fields of theological 
warfare. I know that Professor Por- 
ter, sitting in his cushioned seat with 
two yellow bandanas around his neck 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

and an overcoat under his blue cloak, 
used to smile most benignantly on the 
wit and repartee which now and then 
threw its flash of light over the dim 
room. 

In many respects these professional 
gatherings were not very different from 
similar occasions to-day. But what 
would they think in Andover now, 
should a young man make his appear- 
ance upon the platform to deliver an 
oration, in the costume described to me 
as his by a city clergyman? 

" I used," he said, " to button up my 
vest and spread out the white cotton 
handkerchief I wore around my neck 
so as to hide my unbleached, bosomless 
shirt; and I always put a few fresh 
tacks into the holes of my boots to make 
sure my stockingless feet should not ob- 
trude themselves upon the public gaze." 

6 [sT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



He looked back upon those rugged steps 
by which he had cHmbed as almost 
flower-covered, and spoke to me with 
tears in his eyes of " the blessed, days 
when your mother was an angel of light 
to me." And this man lived to fill for 
years one of our most prominent pul- 
pits, and to exert an influence no one 
can measure. 

Most peculiar, as an Andover week- 
day meeting, was the " Jews' Meeting," 
held on Friday evening at the house of 
Professor Porter. That house was very 
different then from what it is to-day. 
If it had been hermetically sealed from 
foundation to roof, the sun and air would 
have found almost as ready admittance. 
Closed doors, closed outside shutters 
and inside window-blinds, and a general 
shut-down and shut-in air made it seem, 
to us children at least, like a great 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

wooden tomb. Here every Friday even- 
ing a few young people were gathered 
together to pray for the conversion of 
the Jews. I do not know but that some- 
where in this wide world meetings are 
held for this same object now, but simir 
lar to these they cannot be. 

Mrs. Porter, the wife of the professor, 
was the sole originator, and if I may so 
express it, the sole proprietor of these 
meetings. What charm she could have 
thrown around them to draw us young 
people thither, I cannot now even im- 
agine; but charm there was, so that on 
Friday evening, particularly in winter, 
when our other diversions were so few, 
we often climbed up the icy granite 
steps, swung open the two carefully 
closed outside doors, groped our way 
through the large, desolate hall, by the 
aid of the one tallow candle in the bright 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



britannia candlestick, to a small room, 
separated by a wooden partition from the 
piazza, of which it had originally formed 
a part. In this bit of a room was a light 
stand, upon which were placed two tall 
plated candlesticks, holding the inevi- 
table tallow dips, a pile of " Village 
Hymn-Books," and a Bible. Close by 
there was a red-hot stove, and almost 
touching the stove a little woman dressed 
in a plain, old-fashioned black dress. A 
tight lace cap, with narrow black strings, 
surmounted a face so singularly placid 
and quiet that Mrs. Porter might have 
passed for some old saint stepped out 
from a picture-frame. Two small hands 
were always folded softly together in 
her lap, and two small brown eyes 
twinkled out the only welcome we ever 
received,. Yellow wooden chairs were 
arranged in close and solemn order 

fsT] 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

along the walls of the room, and before 
each of those intended for the smaller 
children was always carefully placed a 
carpeted footstool. No matter how 
early we came, not a syllable was ever 
allowed to be spoken; any attempt at 
a whisper was always followed by a 
denunciatory trotting of Mrs. Porter's 
httle moccasin-covered feet upon the 
bare floor. 

Generally three or four of the Semi- 
nary students came in to carry on the 
meeting, choice spirits, chosen by Mrs. 
Porter because they had evinced much 
fervor in regard to the conversion of the 
despised, downtrodden Hebrews; and 
upon these students, as well as upon us, 
seemed to fall the magnetism peculiar 
to the occasion. The Jews did not seem 
cold, formal, or distant objects of 
prayer; they were living, suffering, 

{IT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



sinning fellow mortals, nearer and 
dearer, in that Christ had lived among 
them, and had been himself a Jew. 
Prayer, singing, and the reading of 
chapters from the Bible and a few per- 
tinent newspaper cuttings found during 
the week usually made up the services. 
The associations my memory holds of 
these meetings are these: the desolate- 
ness of the house, the gathering of so 
many young people for such an object, 
the demure, devotional, little central 
figure, and over all a peculiar Oriental 
glamour, so quickly to be felt, so impos- 
sible to describe — a glamour rendered 
more effective by the religious, literary 
atmosphere in which it was developed. 

Saturday night brought a social 
prayer-meeting in the lower lecture 
room of the chapel. To this, when little 
girls, we were never invited; but when 



ANDOVER WEEK-DAY MEETINGS 

years made the need of such religious 
intercourse more apparent, the front 
seats were set apart for ladies and their 
presence tolerated — or perhaps I may 
truthfully admit any extra shade of wel- 
come that may be implied in the word 
allowed. But, little girls or grown 
women, we were never legitimate parts 
of this Andover life. We listened in 
these meetings; we sang with fear and 
trembling, lest our thin voices should 
in any way disturb the Lockhart So- 
ciety, which in so dignified and classical 
a way conducted the musical part of the 
services; we joined in the prayers in 
the half-hearted manner of those who 
feel themselves outsiders. When the 
" Amen " had dismissed us — shall I 
dare to confess it? — we sometimes 
went out through the entry with "lin- 
gering steps and slow," not expecting 

[87] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



escort — of course not! — but still al- 
lowing to ourselves the possibility that 
our walk home might not be solitary. 
That it was not always solitary, no better 
proof can be given than the fact that 
of all the young ladies born and bred 
on Andover Hill, only one, that I can 
recollect, married a man who was not 
a minister. Many other religious serv- 
ices have had a similar outcome; let 
us not lay up the fact against the life 
or the meetings on Andover Hill. 



[88] 



V 

ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 

That not all the variations in our An- 
dover life were afforded by our different 
religious meetings will appear from a 
short account of our holidays. They 
were few, but they were true holidays. 
There was Election Day, reference to 
which has already been made. There 
was Fast Day, if so religious an occa- 
sion ought to be called a holiday; at 
least we had no school, and if not a 
regular dinner, a wonderfully good 
luncheon, and the freedom of the day 
after the morning service in the chapel. 
Christmas was ignored. There was too 
much Puritan blood in the faculty to 
allow any such " popish recognition of 
a doubtful date." As for New Year's, 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



perhaps it is enough for me to say that 
one of my most vivid childish recollec- 
tions is of a sermon preached on the 
first of January from the text, " This 
year thou shalt die." The preacher 
spoke of the opening year as the narrow 
neck of land between the two unbounded 
seas of past and future, and brought out 
the inexorable moral: 

"A point of time, a moment's space. 
Divides you from your heavenly place. 
Or shuts you up in — .'* 

The Seminary Anniversary and 
Thanksgiving were the two main occa- 
sions of our full enjoyment. Anniver- 
sary, the week when the senior class 
graduated, was our great jubilee. It is 
difficult now, with the crowding of sim- 
ilar events and the changed status of 
the ministry, to realize the significance 
of such occasions when theological sem- 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



inaries were few, religious and literary- 
gatherings rare entertainments, and the 
" ephod of gold, blue, and purple, and 
scarlet, and fine twined linen," as yet a 
priestly garment of God's appointing, 
pure and unspotted from the world. 

The bustle of preparation began in 
the families of the faculty at least two 
weeks before the appointed date. We 
children were sent out to scour the coun- 
try for miles around, in search of eggs, 
chickens, and such nice fruits as were 
afforded by early September and the 
rather crude state of Andover horticul- 
ture. " Help " (that was the Andover 
term), trained by ser\ace in previous 
years, was duly notified of the coming 
need. Gardens were weeded, grounds 
were raked. Joe Pearson was put to 
work upon the broad walks leading up 
to the chapel. Stray rails were replaced 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



in fences and gates, dead branches were 
lopped from tree and bush; and a gen- 
eral air of Sabbatical jubilee pervaded 
the very atmosphere. 

And then the cooking! I am almost 
afraid I should be considered exagger- 
ating if I should recount the loaves of 
richest, rarest, most delicious cake that 
crowded every pantry, and in my 
mother's house filled a little room up- 
stairs, set apart for this use. And the 
pies! hiding within their dainty cover- 
ings fruits flavored by the potent sun- 
shine, nowhere brighter in its brief 
season of shining than on this chosen 
Hill. To gaze on these pies, ranged on 
long rows of impromptu shelves, came 
almost hourly eager-eyed children on 
little tiptoeing feet. It is beautiful to 
recall this lavish hospitality, this bring- 
ing of the very choicest and best and 

foil 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



piling it up so whole-heartedly to do 
honor to the occasion. There was some- 
thing more than met the senses in the 
savory smells of roast and boiled and 
baked that day after day issued from 
the crowded, busy kitchens. These fam- 
ilies were in earnest in their belief that 
their work, even in so small a matter 
as entertaining, was ordered by their 
great Taskmaster, and that to help them 
perform it well all they had in the world 
was not too much to bring. 

Every inch of space in all the houses 
near the Seminary was devoted to the 
accommodation of guests. The rooms 
of state in the different households were 
assigned to the " visitors," and to the 
" members of the corporation," the " vis- 
itors " being honored first. Capacious 
garrets were transformed into long 
sleeping-rooms. Beds were put up, 

19S] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



and draped in white by my mother's 
skilful fingers, in our airy wood-house 
chamber. The boys were assigned soft 
spots on the haymow. Extra " help " 
was tucked away in places imaginable 
or unimaginable, but strictly comfort- 
able. " Use hospitality without grudg- 
ing " ; never, even in Andover, was a 
Bible maxim more rigidly enforced than 
this one, by the hanging out of the latch- 
string at Anniversary time. 

I have no recollection that Sunday 
brought to the graduation class parting 
words of affection and counsel; still, it 
was the last Sunday to be spent here 
with those who had borne an important 
part in our prayers and praises for three 
long years — the very last until we 
should all meet 



"Where the assembly ne'er breaks up. 
The Sabbaths never end." 



94 



AS DOS' Eli iiOlADAYH 



On Monday morning Andover was 
astir with the first dawning of the gray 
September light. The final touch was 
to be put on house and grounds; and 
such of the culinary preparations as 
could not be attended to during the pre- 
vious week must be hurried to an im- 
mediate consummation. 

There were no railroads in those early 
days. Distance was overcome by fa- 
tigue, and long-considered, well-laid 
plans. The journey to an Andover 
Anniversary seemed as great an under- 
taking to the scattered sons and friends 
of the Seminary as would appear to us 
now a trip to Europe or even a tour 
around the world. There was pinching 
and deprivation in many a poor min- 
ister's family in order to allow the hus- 
band and father to go up with the other 
elect to this tabernacle of their T>ord. 



[95] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



There were long, weary miles trodden 
by weary feet, rough roads driven over 
with a thin, hungry horse in the old 
" one hoss shay," and rusty saddle-bags 
mended and packed with scanty, seedy 
wardrobes, always containing, however, 
no matter what they might be without, 
the immaculate white cravat. Oh, there 
was such a shaking of the dry bones of 
the poor country clergy, that their rattle 
comes down to me now. I write it rev- 
erently, with a smile which has in it far 
more of sadness than of mirth. 

Any time after breakfast on Monday 
morning guests were expected to arrive. 
Our drawing-room chamber was set 
apart for Mr. and Mrs. William Reed 
of Marblehead. Wending its way along 
the pleasant Salem turnpike, there came 
in sight, about noon on Monday, Mr. 
Reed's handsome carriage. Mr. and 



ANDOVEE HOLIDAYS 



Mrs. Reed were people of wealth, taste, 
and cultivation, and everything con- 
nected with them possessed a charm. 
Faultless in all their appointments of 
dress and equipage, with a certain air 
of refinement and high life, they brought 
into the professional world, the Anniver- 
sary of which they attended, an urbane 
influence that made itself immediately 
felt. With warm Christian hearts, 
ready sympathies, and open purses, they 
touched this strange life at points no 
others seemed to approach, — touched, 
and touching, blessed. 

Up the Boston turnpike, at about the 
same hour, came John Codman, d.d., 
with his stout English horses, his stout 
English coach, his stout English coach- 
man, his ruddy, cordial English self, 
and his noble little wife. He was one 
of the cloth, this nature's nobleman ; yet 

7 [TT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



the white cravat and the clerical air did 
not sit quite naturally on his round, 
portly form. An old English manor- 
house, with escutcheons emblazoned on 
portal and hall, with rich carvings in 
time-honored oak, shining plate deeply 
graved with the family arms, packs of 
hounds, stables full of hunters, retinues 
of retainers, — this would seemingly 
have formed his natural environment; 
but here he was, a meek, working coun- 
try minister, rich in every good word, 
work, and deed, richer far in these than 
in the gold that turned the glebe lands 
into richest pastures, and the simple par- 
sonage into a tasteful, old-world home. 
If he had been absent, the Anniversary 
would have lost one of its brightest or- 
naments, and Andover one of its warm- 
est friends. 

There would also come driving up the 

fosl 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



Hill about noon a large, old-fashioned 
stage-coach drawn by four horses. In- 
side upon the back seat sat Mr. Bartlett, 
one of the most generous benefactors 
of the Seminary. Thickly stowed away 
upon the other seats were as many of his 
grandchildren as the big vehicle could 
be made to hold. The coach drew up 
before the house of the Bartlett pro- 
fessor, who was always expected to en- 
tertain his illustrious guest. Generally 
one or two of his grandchildren re- 
mained with him, and the rest were 
eagerly sought for by the different fam- 
ilies connected with the faculty. 

Mr. Bartlett's most evident charac- 
teristic on these occasions was his child- 
like simplicity. There was in him an 
utter absence of any demand upon the 
gratitude of those he had so nobly 
helped, — indeed, no man could have 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



been more humble and retiring. A 
stranger asked to select from the group 
who occupied the seats of honor the 
principal benefactor, would in all prob- 
ability have passed him by. 

Another guest was Jeremiah Day, 
president of Yale College, high of fore- 
head, delicate of form, smiling benig- 
nantly over the assembly. He singled 
out the sons of his alma mater, watching 
and advising them from the wisdom of 
his great fatherly heart, proud of their 
success, and full of blessings. 

Daniel Dana, d.d,, brought hither 
the reputation of being " Old School," 
and. for that reason never ceased to be 
to us children a living wonder. Our 
father was to him a heretic ! — an awful 
word, of which only children bred on 
Andover Hill can conceive the full 
significance. 

[100] 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



On Monday there was held the public 
meeting of the Society of Inquiry. It 
was never crowded, its specific interest 
being of a missionary and not of a liter- 
ary character. On Tuesday came the 
public examination, which tried young 
men's souls then as now, but which was 
then considered a little more final in 
settling the question of the student's 
fitness for the ministry. 

On Tuesday, too, the social character 
of the holiday began to manifest itself. 
The throng of visitors had well-nigh 
gathered. Every house was full, every 
table crowded; and the assembling of 
friends — reunions, we should call them 
now — began. Guests were rapidly 
transferred from one house to another 
for dinner, for tea, and for the early 
breakfast. If there is a profession given 
to extreme sociability in its interviews 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



it is the ministry. After the saying of 
grace, always solemn with the sudden 
hush of voices and the cessation of the 
click of china, a more hearty and cordial 
abandon could not be found anywhere 
among any class of people than used 
for an hour to fill the various rooms. 
All theological differences were put 
aside; grim old. specters of natural de- 
pravity, original sin, election, redemp- 
tion, predestination, and free grace were 
relegated into the obscurity from which 
they came, and man met man, his fellow 
man. 

Tuesday evening drew a crowd to 
listen to popular speaking by the Porter 
Rhetorical Society. There was a poem, 
and there were orations, with the 
worldly, literary smack of which I have 
already spoken as peculiar to the meet- 
ings of the society throughout the year. 

[102] 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



To do well was to be assured of a pulpit, 
perhaps of a good parish. The hero of 
the occasion, if he had done well, was 
the distinguished individual who de- 
livered the address. If he had failed — 
well, failure was no worse then than 
now; only in those primitive days 
hearers were a trifle more honest. 

Wednesday was the day of the week. 
Then every one who meant to come up 
to the Passover had gathered. All 
along the fences leading from the 
crowded Mansion House up and down 
the streets stood carriages of every de- 
scription, which had brought in heavy 
loads of visitors. Scores of horses were 
tied inside the fences, and busy boys 
and men were hurrying from one to an- 
other, big bundles of hay under their 
arms, and measures full of oats in their 
hands. Cheat a horse out of a spear of 

[ 103 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



oats on Andover Hill? The very sug- 
gestion is absurd. 

Long before the chapel door was 
opened a dense crowd filled the walk and 
the steps. People huddled under the 
windows, sometimes irreverently climb- 
ing up to them and peeking in to see 
how soon entrance would be allowed. 
When the door was at last thrown open, 
what an orderly rush there was, how re- 
spectful and silent, but how decided! 
Though it was Andover, there was no 
thought that the first should be last. 

When the " Honorable Corporation 
and Board of Visitors " were ready to 
make their slow and dignified entrance, 
a peculiar and distinguished-looking 
audience awaited them. Men and 
women were there whose names go down 
to posterity, who were powers, work- 
ing here in America, working in Europe, 

[104] 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



Asia, and Africa, and in the many 
islands of the sea; God's workmen, 
guided, upheld, ministered unto, and 
finally gathered to the great Anniver- 
sary above. 

Wednesday night the holiday was 
over. After one large tea-party, held at 
an early hour, the lines of horses and 
carriages quickly disappeared from 
fences and posts. Farewells were 
spoken, and even to us reluctant chil- 
dren came the consciousness that the 
great Anniversary was over. By Thurs- 
day noon nearly every guest had de- 
parted, and a stillness, an Andover still- 
ness, settled down over the peaceful 
Hill. Neighing of horses, rattling of 
carriage wheels, trampling of many 
feet, greeting of friendly voices, — all 
were over now; and in the hush the 
chirping of noisy insects, the rustling 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



of falling leaves, spoke the soft on- 
creeping of the autumn time. 

But Thanksgiving still remained to 
us, and even among the earliest of Old 
Andover Days it was a joyful holiday. 
Coming at the end of November, when 
autumn had changed her golden robe 
for one of glittering hoarfrost, when 
sleigh-bells were ringing merrily over 
our snow-bound streets, and when boys 
and girls, red-niittened, with gaudy 
comforters tied close around their necks, 
were exchanging their hoarded stores of 
walnuts and butternuts, swapping ears 
of pop-corn, and trading Baldwins for 
greenings, with much close attention to 
their relative values, — all this with an 
eye to a more worthy celebration of 
the coming festival, — it was only sec- 
ond in importance to the more public 
Anniversary. 

[106] 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



It was then, as now, a family occa- 
sion. There were few wanderers to 
come home; for in the famihes of the 
faculty the children were young and 
had not yet scattered; and to travel 
to Massachusetts from other states, in 
the old, slow stage-coaches, was con- 
sidered almost an impossibility at this 
inclement season of the year; for in- 
deed winter came earlier then, and 
with a usurpation of entire right to 
land and water that would be disputed 
now. 

It is wonderful, in looking back, what 
a holiday we made of it ! Weeks before, 
preparation began in kitchen and pan- 
try. If Anniversary had shown shelves 
of pies and jars of cakes. Thanksgiving 
at least doubled the number. Mince 
pies lasted, even with hungry boys and 
girls who were never denied their piece, 

fToT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



well into spring. Frozen hard they 
were, but none the worse for that. 

If any idea came into our heads that 
the day was in any sense a religious fes- 
tival, it has completely faded from my 
memory. To church we had to go on 
Thanksgiving morning, but we carried 
with us the fragrance of the roasting 
turkey, the warming pies, and the boil- 
ing vegetables ; and instead of the grave 
professor who was offering thanks for 
us all, I am afraid we saw rows of cran- 
berry tarts, currant jellies, piles of nuts, 
rosy apples, and pretty twists of mo- 
lasses candy. 

What a jolly meal the dinner was! 
Every child's plate was piled high with 
delicacies until it could hold no more; 
and the fun and frolic were unsubdued 
by a look or word from the heads of the 
table. And then after dinner came the 



108 ] 



ANDOVER HOLIDAYS 



customary sleigh-ride, when, having 
hired a double sleigh from Ray's stable, 
we would pile it full even to the runners, 
and drive out to some small country 
tavern. There we played merry games, 
heated our soapstones, refilled our 
bottles of hot water, and paid for our 
blazing wood fire. At an early hour 
we went singing home. A decorous 
young party we were, but a very happy 
one. 

The festival has become sacred now. 
Very hallowed are its memories, for the 
white-winged angel has borne one after 
another from the father's house here to 
the great Father's home above. 



[109] 



VI 

ANDOVER WOMEN 

Among the women known to the chil- 
dren of Andover Hill, Mrs. John 
Adams, as an embodiment of the typical 
mother, must have the first place. She 
was a large woman, with a full, frank, 
beaming face, and soft hair, which, 
when we lost her, had silver threads run- 
ning through it. I write "we," for she 
was the mother of us all, as well as of 
her own nine children. When my child 
friend Emily sat on one of her knees 
and I on the other, her broad lap seemed 
to us the most cheerful and restful place 
in all our little world. If we hurt us, we 
tumbled incontinently into her nursery, 
and cried it out in her loving arms. If 

fnol 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



we were overflowing with love and joy 
we took her by storm, pulled her down 
among our rag babies and block houses, 
fed her with our mud-pies, and grew 
wise and good as she petted us. I can- 
not remember that she ever told us that 
we were sinners, or prayed with us ; but 
she gave us big red apples, the biggest 
and reddest that ever grew out of the 
Garden of Eden ; and she would tell us, 
as she watched us greedily devour them, 
how much better it was to be good and 
have such nice things given us, than to 
be naughty and for that be shut up in 
some dark, cold closet. 

She loved flowers, and her little gar- 
den was always ablaze with the bright- 
est and sweetest. It seems to me now 
that her delight in their fragrance and 
color was characteristic, and that she 
was always watching for a chance to 

fTITl 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



drop them before us on the strait and 
narrow road, thus making it more allur- 
ing to our beauty-loving eyes. Dear 
human children we were to her, — not 
angels, and not fallen beings born under 
the curse, with the trail of the serpent 
over us all, — but little ones to be 
taken into her great motherly arms, and 
brought to Jesus for his blessing. 
Brought, that was it, not driven. And 
so, when we stood, a large weeping 
band, around her grave, heaven seemed 
very near and dear, very homelike to 
us, because she was there; and I doubt 
whether even to this day there is one 
of us who does not look forward to her 
warm welcome, if perchance we may go 
to her, with something of the yearn- 
ing with which, as little ones, we used to 
anticipate a visit to her sunny home 
here. A mother of the olden time, this; 



112 ] 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



can our " women of the period " show 
any better? 

In sharp contrast to Mrs. Adams was 
Mrs. Porter. I have abeady had occa- 
sion to refer to her in the chapter on the 
week-day meetings; but these sketches 
would be incomplete without a fuller 
notice of this unusual woman. That 
she is in heaven I have no more doubt 
than that Hannah is there. Like this 
dolorous character, she was " a woman 
of a sorrowful spirit," who might em- 
phatically have declared, " I have drunk 
neither wine nor strong drink, but have 
poured out my soul before the Lord. 
Count not thine handmaid for a daugh- 
ter of Belial : for out of the abundance 
of my complaint and grief have I spoken 
hitherto." 

Looking back through the years and 
trying to analyze her character, I find 

8 [ 113 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



myself taking refuge in a legend which 
was told among us. It was said that 
the demure little figure gliding about 
in her old-fashioned clothes, with her 
brown eyes generally fixed upon the 
ground, and her hands clasping the 
strings of an odd-shaped black silk bag 
in summer, and in winter buried deep 
in the recesses of a big yellow fur muff, 
was once upon a time, the time of a 
woman's life, clad in a black velvet 
cloak, a black velvet hat surmounted by 
a sweeping ostrich plume being upon 
her head; and that thus attired she 
stood by the side of the grave and rev- 
erend Professor Porter, and then and 
there became a bride. This delightful 
hint of worldliness, touching, if only 
in a legend, our common humanity, 
formed the one link between us and her, 
and may have helped to give her the 

[114] 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



influence which she certainly did exert 
over us all. Every one of us children, 
without regard to sex or age, did she 
strive to make into little Samuels, en- 
deavoring to gird us with linen ephods, 
and bring us to minister before the 
Lord. 

Just where the dividing line may 
safely be drawn between common sense 
and religious fervor it would be difficult 
to say. That the two things are often 
unwisely separated, no one who knew 
Mrs. Porter can ever doubt. Living en- 
tirely sequestered from society, occu- 
pying the great house alone with her 
husband and one servant, until, late in 
life, she brought into it two adopted 
children, shutting out from it sun and 
air and even God's beautiful light, she 
made it a place in which the " sorrow- 
ful spirit " brooded over everything. 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



" Eternity ! " " Heaven ! " " HeU ! " 
These three words seemed to be written 
on the doors; they met you at the 
threshold, sat with you in the darkened 
rooms, and haunted your memories of 
the old house. To send us there on an 
errand was to compel us to obedience; 
for to lift the brass knocker, resplen- 
dent in its shining glory, the work of 
black Myra's hands, was to see visions 
of carpetless rooms, long ranges of 
wooden chairs, a table in the center 
holding Bibles and hymn-books, and 
ourselves drawn down on our unwilling 
knees, while Mrs. Porter prayed fer- 
vently that God would forgive us, mis- 
erable sinners! 

" God can listen as well to a few 
words as to a longer petition," she would 
say, when we pleaded the command for 
haste; and, "No time is ever lost in 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



seeking the divine blessing." Escape 
her we could not ; and perhaps the bless- 
ing did come ; God moves in a mysteri- 
ous way! A religious enthusiast may 
be as much one of God's chosen work- 
men as the quiet and steady worker who 
reaps noiselessly in the harvest-field; 
and that our repugnance was not our 
fault, or that in the end Mrs. Porter's 
influence was deleterious, I should be 
reluctant to say. 

The intellectual woman of Andover 
Hill was Mrs. Farrar. A grandchild 
of President Edwards, she inherited in 
a remarkable degree those traits of mind 
and character which made him re- 
nowned. Theology was to her like 
prayer, in the good old hymn: 

*' — the Christian's vital breath. 
The Christian's native air; 
His watchword at the gates of death. 
He enters heaven with " — theology. 



[117] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Coming to Andover in mature life, she 
was yet as thoroughly rooted and 
grounded in the sterner doctrines as 
if she had been indigenous to the 
soil. 

You could not swing back the gate 
that opened upon her scrupulously nice 
domain without perceiving the odor of 
sanctity. You felt like leaving the 
world, the flesh, and the devil behind 
you, and rousing into active exercise 
whatever dormant goodness in you lay. 
We children, even, instinctively felt her 
blood and her breeding. She was a 
lady, with the somewhat stiff, old-time 
courtesies and courtliness. No rude, or 
— if we could, help it — awkward thing 
was ever allowed to obtrude itself upon 
her presence. Her snow-white cap, fine 
and delicate, her handsome black dress, 
and the stomacher so purely white, were 

fTTsl 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



outward signs of inward refinement, 
and as such we recognized them. 

Having a keen interest in everything 
touching the rehgious life, whether in 
the closet, the church, or the universe at 
large, she kept herself intelligent with 
regard to passing events. She despised 
nothing as too small, and did not often 
overrate the magnitude of what was 
taking place; only she saw everything 
through a glass of the same color. She 
has left us the memory of one of those 
strong-minded women who for prin- 
ciple's sake would have crossed the win- 
ter's sea in the " Mayflower," or sung a 
Te Deum at the stake. 

Two other women, although they 
crossed our horizon only at Anniversary 
time, left deep impressions upon our 
young minds. One of the chief orna- 
ments of the great occasion, as it seemed 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



to US, was Mrs. William Reed. Born 
and bred in affluence, she was singularly 
fitted by nature to fill precisely the posi- 
tion she held. Tall and stately, graceful 
and dignified, she carried with her, 
wherever she went, an air of command 
and high breeding which no one could 
resist. Something in her own refine- 
ment seemed to draw out the refinement 
in others. So it came about that many 
were raised by the touch of her hand into 
a higher and nobler life. It is some- 
thing to find a Christian clown, and 
leave a Christian gentleman; and this 
she often accomplished. A philan- 
thropist whose wisely benevolent hands 
never wasted the gold she distributed; 
she was a philanthropist also by virtue 
of conferring that indescribable charm 
that makes life good because it is beau- 
tiful. I will not answer for the theol- 



[120] 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



ogy of this sentence; I only assert its 
truth. 

Mrs. Reed's niece sends me an anec- 
dote about her which is quite in har- 
mony with the impression she made in 
earlier years upon her young observers. 
After the election of President Harri- 
son, in 1840, the enthusiastic Whig 
voters of Marblehead, who had always 
been in the minority there, got up a 
torchlight procession, followed by ad- 
dresses and a dinner in the Hall. A 
niece of Mrs. Reed, whose house was 
nearly opposite this Hall, determining 
that the women should have a share in 
the festivities, assembled all the ladies 
belonging to the large family connec- 
tion, with many others, to see the proces- 
sion, and to enjoy themselves as best 
they might in the absence of the mascu- 
line element. The house was brilliantly 

[121] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



illuminated, making the street for some 
distance very bright. 

As the procession approached, with 
torches, banners, and bands of music, 
they halted, before the house, saluting 
the ladies with three times three cheers. 
The ladies responded by waving their 
handkerchiefs. 

After the procession had passed into 
the hall, a noisy crowd gathered, and 
with abusive epithets began to assail the 
house by throwing mud, sticks, and at 
last stones, so that one or two windows 
were broken. The ladies were much 
alarmed, as their natural protectors 
were all in the hall, unconscious of what 
was going on outside. 

At this juncture Mrs. Reed suddenly 
opened the door and stepped out upon 
the porch. She spoke not a word, but 
looked with dignified surprise and re- 

[ 122] 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



proof upon the mob. Instantly the 
noise was hushed, some hands, still hold- 
ing missiles, remaining uplifted. Every 
eye was fixed upon her, as she stood at 
the most perfect ease and in unbroken 
silence. After a few moments she 
turned, and closed the door. 

Immediately a shout arose, " Three 
cheers for Mrs. Reed!" They were 
given with a will, and the crowd dis- 
persed to burn General Harrison in 
effigy. 

To all who knew Mrs. Codman, the 
other guest of whom I shall speak, her 
yearly visit to Andover was like taking 
down from the windows of their lives 
the eastern shutters, and letting in whole 
floods of morning sunlight. A small 
woman, without any of the natural pres- 
tige Mrs. Reed so eminently possessed, 
she yet came as near the hearts of others, 

[ 123] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



and affected their lives with as lasting 
an impress. Of coarseness and rough- 
ness she showed no consciousness if she 
found a suffering human heart. Com- 
ing very near to such a heart and min- 
istering to it was her mission, — speak- 
ing appreciative, loving words, giving 
liberally, not as a donor, never as a 
patron, but as a tender mother, who felt 
every want more deeply than if it were 
her own. Young men would sit down 
by her side and tell her secrets of their 
inner lives hidden before from every one 
but the All-Seeing, — tell them, often, 
with tears in their eyes, nor feel one 
whit of their manhood abated because 
she saw them there. When she died 
she could hardly have needed angels to 
conduct her through the valley of the 
shadow, so many of those to whom she 
had ministered here and who had gone 

[ 124 ] 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



before her must have been waiting 
eagerly to bring her through with shouts 
of welcome. 

In closing, let me touch lightly on her 
who to me was nearest, dearest, best, — 
my mother. As I look back, and try 
out of the Madonna-faced images that 
come at my call, to choose the one that 
shall be most characteristic, I remember 
that one of her sons, when the mists of 
death were shutting out his busy life, 
said while he looked for her with yearn- 
ing, trusting love in the gathering dark- 
ness, " My mother, from whose lips was 
never heard a word of disparagement 
of any human being." 

Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who 
came to live in Andover after I had left 
it, and was a family friend and neigh- 
bor for many years, wrote at the time of 
my mother's death a poem which gives 

[125] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



SO sympathetic a glimpse of her that I 
will include it here: 

**How quiet, through the hazy autumn air, 

The elm-boughs wave with many a gold-jflecked 
leaf! 
How calmly float the dreamy mantled clouds, 
Through these still days of autumn, fair and 
brief ! 

*'Our Andover stands thoughtful, fair, and calm» 
Waiting to lay her summer glories by, 
Ere the bright flush shall kindle all her pines, 
And her woods blaze with autumn's heraldry. 

**By the old mossy wall the golden-rod 

Waves as aforetime, and the purple sprays 
Of starry asters quiver to the breeze. 

Rustling all stilly through the forest ways. 

**No voice of triumph from those silent skies 
Breaks on the calm, and speaks of glories near, 
Nor bright wings flutter, nor fair glistening robes 
Proclaim that heavenly messengers are here. 

"Yet in our midst an angel hath come down. 
Troubling the waters in a quiet home ; 
And from that home, of life's long sickness healed 
A saint hath risen, where pain no more may come. 

"Calm, like a lamb in shepherd's bosom borne. 
Quiet and trustful hath she sunk to rest; 
God breathed in tenderness the sweet, ' Well done ! * 
That scarce awoke a trance so still and blest. 

[126] 



ANDOVER WOMEN 



**Ye who remember the long, loving years, 
The patient mother's hourly martyrdom. 
The self-renouncing wisdom, the calm trust. 
Rejoice for her whose day of rest has come ! 

"Father and mother, now united, stand. 

Waiting for you to bind the household chain ; 
The tent is struck, the home is gone before. 
And tarries for you on the heavenly plain. 

"By every wish repressed and hope resigned. 
Each cross accepted and each sorrow borne. 
She dead yet speaketh, she doth beckon you 
To tread the path her patient feet have worn. 

"Each year that world grows richer and more dear 
With the bright freight washed from this stormy 
shore ; 
O goodly clime, how lovely is thy strand. 

With those dear faces seen on earth no more ! 

"The veil between this world and that to come 
Grows tremulous and quivers with their breath; 
Dimly we hear their voices, see their hands, 
Inviting us to the release of death. 

"O Thou, in whom thy saints above, below, 
Are one and undivided, grant us grace 
In patience yet to bear our daily cross, — 
In patience run our hourly shortening race ! 

"And while on earth we wear the servant's form. 
And while life's labors ever toilful be, 
Breathe in our souls the joyful confidence 

We are already kings and priests with thee.*' * 

* "Lines on the Death of Mrs. Stuart." Religious 
Poems: Boston. Ticknor and Fields. 1867. p. 53. 

[127] 



VII 

ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

There is hardly a spot in New England 
over whose quiet beauty the morning 
breaks and the sun rises with such grand 
solemnity as on Andover Hill. It is 
not difficult there to imagine God sit- 
ting behind the high altar listening to 
the prayers and praises which ascend to 
him with the earliest light from so many 
pious hearts. At evening, too, not even 
Italy can rival the rich draperies of 
gold and purple and amethyst, of crim- 
son and scarlet, gray and azure, in which 
the setting sun wraps itself as it sinks 
slowly to its bed, beneath the wide, hilly 
horizon. Otherwise, however, Andover 
has little of which to boast in the way of 
natural scenery. It was no wonder, 

[128] 



ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

therefore, that we thought and made so 
much of the few spots that offered any 
allurements in the way of outdoor enjoy- 
ment. The first of which I shall write 
is Prospect Hill. This hill lies about 
two miles southeast from the Seminary 
buildings, a little off what used to be 
called the old Salem turnpike. It is not 
high, yet it well deserves its name; for 
when you have climbed its smooth green 
sides, the panorama is soft and beauti- 
ful. Small farms, with stone walls, neat 
white houses, and large barns, each with 
cattle feeding everywhere upon the 
broad meadow lands, creep up to the 
foot of the hill. Here and there are 
dense woods ; and small patches of birch 
or beech-trees dot the open spaces. The 
crowning glory of the view is the dis- 
tant ocean fifteen miles away. On a 
clear day ships can easily be seen with 

9 [ 129 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



the naked eye. To stand there and 
watch them while Hke white birds they 
skim along the blue is reward enough 
for climbing to the top. 

Hither, during many years of his life, 
Professor Stuart used to come, once a 
summer, with the young men of his 
class. A pleasant holiday it was to him, 
one of the few he ever allowed himself; 
and into it he entered with a zest which 
those who shared it with him did not 
soon forget. He laid aside the pro- 
fessor, and made the students his boon 
companions, with whom he talked in his 
inimitable way. Not a thing in field or 
sky escaped him. The birds sang for 
him, and for him the wayside flowers 
bloomed along the road. The fields 
ripening for the harvest had their word 
of approbation or of condemnation, as 
he thought they deserved. The people 

[liol 



ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

met along the way he recognized by 
some words of hearty good-will. And 
when at last the top of the hill was 
gained, not an eye caught the points of 
the landscape more quickly than his, or 
with greater appreciation. 

The distance of this trysting-place 
from home caused it to be less fre- 
quently sought than others that were 
nearer; but still not a summer passed 
that the more adventurous among us did 
not plan our little parties thither, when, 
standing on the top, we felt as we might 
had we climbed Mont Blanc, and beheld 
from its summit the glories of the world. 

Next to Prospect Hill in popular 
favor came the North Parish Pond. 
This was three miles from the Semi- 
nary Hill, and was not considered within 
walking distance; yet its beauty and 
availability when reached made it a 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



favorite picnic ground; so that a sum- 
mer which passed and left it unvisited 
was counted among the lost years. Sa- 
cred beyond any other trysting-place is 
this to the memory of those who once 
sang their merry songs to the dip of 
oars in its clear waters, and whose barks 
have now floated far away on the great 
imknown sea. 

Picnics have come into disrepute of 
late, and well they may, with the elabo- 
rate preparations now customary; but 
in the olden time they had a simplicity 
and freedom charming to enjoy and no 
less charming to remember. We awak- 
ened on the day appointed for a visit to 
the pond, exhilarated and happy. It 
was to be a general holiday, and all the 
families on the Hill were astir with the 
dawn. Smoke rushed out from every 
chimney, great fires blazed and crackled 

[132] 



ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

in the ample fireplaces and ovens. Per- 
sis and Betsy, Phoebe and Myra, our 
long trusted, well-beloved " help," with 
their deft fingers were preparing good 
things for an early bake; and with 
quick steps and anxious, housewifely 
tact, our mothers were arranging bas- 
kets and pails to hold what the ovens 
were soon to yield. When at last, all 
being in readiness, the carriages stood 
before our doors, and we rushed pell- 
mell into them, it would have been hard 
to find a merrier or a happier party. 

This pond, visited only on warm, 
bright summer days, had a tree-girt 
shore, a few small islands, and a crystal 
sparkle that shone and danced upon its 
little waves, with a beauty not to be for- 
gotten. Rowing out upon Lake Mag- 
giore in the glory of an Italian morn- 
ing, I saw the same sparkle, and was in 

[133] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



an instant far away from the scenes 
around me, back upon the shores of this 
little New England lake. 

The avowed purpose of our excur- 
sion was to fish. There were a few leaky- 
old boats always to be hired, and boys 
proud to do the work of rowing, while 
the hands whose daily task it was to 
turn the leaves of ponderous theological 
tomes, baited the hooks, or with more 
than a boy's enthusiasm drew up and 
secured the fluttering little fish. Many 
flounders we caught, and — but I will 
not tell tales. After the catching came 
the cooking, and what a jolly time it 
was! I hope the word " jolly " will not 
be considered irreverent; for it was a 
jolly time, and our fish were — but, as 
I said before, I will not tell tales. If 
one only looked in the right places, one 
might doubtless find now the rough fire- 

[134] 



ANDOVKIl TK Y ST r NO- PLACES 

place wherein we cooked them, the 
rudely built seats that surrounded the 
rudely built table upon which we served 
them, and, perhaps, the footprints of 
those who kept tryst there so long ago! 
But it is around the two trysting- 
places, Pomp's Pond and Indian Ridge, 
both nearer the Hill and therefore easier 
of access, that there cluster the most nu- 
merous associations. Indian Ridge is 
an embankment about twenty feet high, 
which runs along at a short distance 
from the western bank of the Shaw- 
sheen River. It is broad and level at 
the top, and is carpeted by a short, thin 
greensward. Its sides are thickly cov- 
ered with trees. As children, we firmly 
believed it to be a vast mausoleum within 
which reposed the bones of vast Indian 
tribes. Their dusky ghosts, we thought, 
haunted their resting-place, looked 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



down frowningly upon us palefaces 
from the high tree-tops, or stealthily- 
glanced out from behind the old moss- 
covered trunks. I doubt whether you 
could have induced one of us to remain 
there after the shades of evening crept 
over the Ridge. 

At certain hours of almost every day 
you would be sure to see other dusky 
forms, not quite so ethereal as those of 
the dead Indians, but almost as grave, 
moving around among the shadows and 
the flickering sunbeams. Sometimes 
these figures threw themselves prone 
upon the ground, and taking a book 
from their pockets were soon lost to all 
the happy external world. Sometimes 
they shouted bits of deep discourse, sang 
pious hymns, or uttered disjointed sen- 
tences of ejaculatory prayer. Some- 
times, — and this it is pleasant to re- 

[136] 



ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

member, — they ran, and sang every- 
day songs, whistled merry tunes, and 
leaped, back over the years of manhood 
to the happy boy days. O Indian 
Ridge! if you could only tell the story 
of the unbending you have seen ; if you 
could whisper to us the sallies of ready 
wit, the jocundity, the heart merriment 
of which you have been the hearer, what 
a revelation you would make ! 

Since the Ridge is silent, let us hear 
the testimony of one of the old-time 
theologues : 

" For many hours each day it was the 
custom to study closely, severely, if you 
please, but when the hour of rest came 
it was greeted by a company as light- 
hearted and happy as is often found in 
this world. In long-drawn files we hur- 
ried by the back road toward the North 
Parish, or to Frye Village, or across the 

[137] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Shawsheen to Indian Ridge, and by 
other pleasant and well-known paths; 
and when the faithful muezzin on the 
chapel summoned us to conmions, we 
hasted with willing feet not more eager 
to satisfy our hunger than to enjoy 
the social feast that awaited us. The 
tumblers were transparent, the joints 
could not have been tough, the vege- 
tables, i. e,, the potatoes, were fair to 
look at, and all were partaken of by a 
company as thankful and as happy as 
good principles and young Ufe could 
make them." 

To Pomp's Pond I have referred in 
a previous chapter. It was only a small 
pond, so small that we could love every 
drop it held, could sit upon its green, 
sloping ba-nks and count the little waves 
that broke along its pebbly beach, could 
venture out in a cockle-shell to float on 



138 ] 



ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

its tranquil bosom, and feel no more 
fear than the wise men who went to sea 
in a bowl. The shadows and the liHes 
were the two great attractions here. 
Upon the still bosom of this lake, in the 
gloaming of a summer day, there were 
pictures of tall pine-trees, each needle 
dancing up and down as if in for an 
evening bath, pictures of sturdy oaks, 
their sturdiness lost in the rollicking 
waves, pictures of bending larches 
stooping over the bright mirror with a 
pleased smile at their own loveliness, 
and, most beautiful of all, clouds float- 
ing as quietly in the blue beneath as in 
the blue above. With all these mingled 
the lovely pond-lily, its white blossoms 
waiting, it seemed to us, to be gathered 
by boys and girls to whom the risk of 
a life seemed a small matter in compari- 
son to becoming the possessor of a 

[139] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



long, drooping bunch of these favorite 
flowers. 

Old Pomp and Dinah, with their 
happy black faces, and their careless, 
*' never mind " hearts, were fit patron 
saints for the place. Neither cold nor 
hunger nor sickness disheartened them. 
They had smiles for you if Pomp was 
" bad. with the rheumatiz,'* or Dinah was 
" laid up for a spell." They took life 
as God sent it, trusting him in summer 
and in winter alike ; and when, old and 
feeble, they were taken home, they went 
with the same good cheer, leaving their 
blessing on the pretty pond to brood 
over it unto this day. What a trysting- 
place it was! I am not going to tell of 
the words of love first spoken there, of 
the vows that were made, the promises 
registered and sealed there, and, let us 
hope, bravely and loyally kept to the 

[140] 



ANDOVER TRYSTING-PLACES 

end. If ever such natural retreats were 
needed, they were needed in Andover; 
for the life of a student is often the life 
of a recluse. The ponds, the Ridge, the 
hill, had each a mission work to do, and 
they did it well. 



iii 



VIII 

SOME MEN OF THE OLDEN TIME 
I. LEONARD WOODS, D.D. 

No one of the Andover professors was 
a more distinct personality for us chil- 
dren than Dr. Leonard Woods. To this 
result there contributed in different de- 
grees his handsome presence, his dark 
repute as a theologian, and his benig- 
nity towards us all. 

The dwelling-house which he built 
shortly after coming to Andover was in 
strict keeping with the character of the 
man. It was a large, three-story house, 
plain even to the lack of blinds to shield 
its many windows, but with ample and 
convenient rooms, and closets large 
enough to serve us children as so many 

[142] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

baby-houses. In this house he lived 
from the day of its completion to the 
day of his death; and here a large 
family of sons and daughters grew up 
to maturity. 

Writing of her father to me, one of 
his daughters says: 

" You well know my father's genial- 
ity and blandness, his great tenderness 
as a husband and father. I don't think 
I ever heard him speak of Sarah [a 
daughter who died young] without tears 
in his eyes. And you know of his unsur- 
passed tenderness to our mother in the 
ten years of her sickness, of the wagon 
he had made in which to draw her up 
and down beneath the elms, and how he 
used to put it on runners in the winter. 
Sometimes your father used to come in 
and ask, * Where 's Brother Woods?' 
When told he was drawing mother, he 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



would go off without another word, and, 
joining them, would take hold and help 
draw, while they discussed, I dare say, 
some knotty point in theology. We 
used to congratulate mother on her il- 
lustrious team. 

" I remember how I used to break 
down on going away to school in very 
abandonment of sorrow; but my tears 
would flow afresh when I caught sight 
of father's quivering lip. I knew with 
a moral certainty that as soon as I had 
left he would go into the study and pray 
for me. And then his beaming face and 
outstretched arms on my return I Oh, 
how vividly does it all come before 
me ! Every child he had remembers all 
this." 

There can be no more beautiful pic- 
ture than this of Dr. Woods drawing his 
invalid wife in that chair-wagon. A 

[144] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

stalwart, handsome man, preoccupied 
moreover by the nature and demands of 
his profession, he might have been sup- 
posed by a stranger to be hfted out from 
the world of small kindnesses and lov- 
ing tendernesses; but, in truth, no one 
was here so thoroughly at home. 
Wrapping the shawls around his little, 
pale wife so that no wind from the bleak 
Andover heavens could visit her too 
roughly, and seating her carefully and 
easily in the cushioned chair, he drew 
her over the graveled sidewalks with a 
minute attention to the spots upon which 
the wheels could run most smoothly. 
When the day was hot, he sought the 
deepest shadows thrown by the large 
elms. He passed the yards where the 
flowers were the brightest, or the lawns 
best kept, stopping now and then to ex- 
change a word of greeting with a friend, 

10 [ 145 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



or to do an errand that would interest 
and amuse the invalid. 

Writing of him in his domestic char- 
acter, an old pupil says: 

"During the whole of my acquaint- 
ance with him, — as one who enjoyed 
the privilege of occupying a room in his 
own dwelling-house for the three years 
of my course in the Seminary, — the 
loveliness and faithfulness of his charac- 
ter in this respect was continually de- 
veloped, and excited my admiration and 
esteem. He was a most affectionate 
and faithful husband and father. I 
have seen him in times of domestic 
affliction and trial ; and when I think of 
him as he appeared then, I am reminded 
of what my imagination pictures to me 
of Abraham himself, walking forth with 
Isaac, or buying of the sons of Heth a 
burial place for his beloved Sarah. He 

[146] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

had much of the dignity and the ten- 
derness in his dignity of the ancient 
patriarch." ^ 

The last days of his life were peace- 
ful, and filled with the faithful work 
which even the growing infirmities of 
years did not tempt him to discontinue. 
If there had come across his vision a 
glimpse into the troubled future await- 
ing his beloved Seminary, this holy 
calm would doubtless have given place 
to deep anxieties and forebodings; but, 
fortunately for him, he went home while 
from the old pulpit there had been ut- 
tered no heretical discourses, while 
Westminster Shorter Catechism still 
held its revered place by the side of the 
words of Holy Writ, while second pro- 
bation was a thing undreamed of, and 



* Dr. Blagden: "Semi-Centennial Celebration," And- 
over, 1859, p. 188 f. 

fuT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



a trial of a member of the faculty for 
heresy as impossible to anticipate as the 
burning of one of them at the stake for 
too close an adherence to the old the- 
ology. He was an old man when he 
died; and he was buried in the hal- 
lowed cemetery behind the chapel which 
he had loved, and in which he had 
taught and preached for so many long 
years. 

n. WILLIAM BARTLETT 

Sometimes in my childhood my 
mother took me with her when she went 
visiting. Two such visits I will describe, 
because they gave me lasting pictures 
of two of the principal benefactors of 
the Seminary in the earliest days. The 
first was to Mr. William Bartlett of 
Newburyport. I remember a large, 
three-story white house built directly on 

[148] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

the street, and recall standing at the 
front door, holding tightly to my 
mother's hand, while the great brass 
knocker was lifted and fell with a cheery 
tone, as if it were sure something pleas- 
ant was to come. Then I remember an 
open door, a dark hall, with a big ma- 
hogany table standing on one side, and 
upon the table a black hat and a black 
cane. One more open door, and a room 
with an old gentleman in a large old 
chair, the man and the chair seeming to 
fill the whole room. He did not rise, 
but he held out two great hands toward 
the entering guests, one to shake hands 
with the lady, the other to pat the little 
girl's head. He hfted the child upon 
his broad knee, where she sat not daring 
to raise her eyes, hardly daring to 
breathe, until he seemed to have forgot- 
ten her. Then she shyly turned her 

[ 149 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



head half toward him, and saw a white 
ruffled shirt bosom that seemed to rise 
hke a cloud between them and almost 
shut him from her. Above the shirt 
bosom there was a face surrounded by- 
short gray hair, some eyes that looked at 
the mother but not at the child, and a 
mouth that smiled so pleasantly that 
little lips forgot to tremble and smiled 
too. Later, there was a tea-table cov- 
ered with curious old china. All stood 
a moment behind the chairs with bowed 
heads, while the gray-haired man ut- 
tered a simple blessing. This is the pic- 
ture of an old man about whom there 
was a halo, though for what reason the 
child's mind failed to recognize. Yet 
she gave to him, there and then, in that 
attitude of prayer, a hero-worship which 
long years have failed to lessen, — 
which, indeed, the years that have shown 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

her what he was in his noble manhood, 
have only increased. 

I afterwards saw Mr. Bartlett many- 
times, when he came to Andover for the 
Anniversary. I remember him as he 
used to sit in one of the seats of honor 
upon the stage, with his large, well-built 
frame, his white hair, his expressive blue 
eye, and the benign, satisfied look with 
which he regarded the surging crowd 
before him. Never amid all the culture 
and refinement which he found await- 
ing him there, and of which he was the 
central figure, did he seem in the least 
embarrassed or out of place. On one 
of these occasions, because he had al- 
ways persistently refused to have his 
portrait taken, there was introduced 
into the chapel a painter, who took his 
likeness without his knowledge. This 
portrait, which still hangs in the Semi- 

[151] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



nary Library, has somewhat faded with 
time; and by a tradition truly charac- 
teristic of Andover Hill, the fading of 
the hues has been called a judgment on 
the surreptitious course by which the 
portrait was obtained. 

Though his portrait in the Seminary 
Library has faded, the portrait in my 
memory remains as distinct as ever. I 
see a large man, with a well-formed 
head, a mild and quiet blue eye, a Ro- 
man nose, a firm mouth, and a chin that 
looks as if chiseled out of marble. 
Never was there another human face 
where the upper and lower parts im- 
plied characteristics so different. Cov- 
ering the lower part, you would have 
said that the man was one of the gentlest 
and most lovable of human beings ; cov- 
ering the upper part, you would have 
known that there was in him neither 

[ 152 1 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

pity nor forgiveness for the delinquent 
who through idleness or folly had come 
to grief. 

III. MOSES BROWN 

It was possibly during the same visit 
to Newburyport that I was taken to call 
on Mr. Moses Brown. I saw a little 
old man dressed in small-clothes, with 
buckles at his knees, long white stock- 
ings, and low shoes, also fastened with 
shining buckles. I recall, too, a shirt 
frill of the finest plaiting, and a blue 
coat with great gilt buttons down the 
front. Mr. Brown had a thin face, dark 
eyes, and small features. When he 
smiled, which he did a great deal, the 
wrinkles round his mouth seemed to 
pucker up like those on a dried apple; 
but the smile was winning, and drew the 
little girl close by his side. 

The house in which he lived bore an 

[153] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



important part in causing the glamour 
of the visit. It was a two-story, rather 
quaint house, with many windows, and 
was painted white with green blinds. It 
stood in the midst of ample grounds, 
upon which grew large trees, and there 
were choice shrubs in the front yard, 
rose-trees under the windows, and large 
lilac and syringa bushes along the path 
from the gate to the front door. Curi- 
ous beds were bordered with tall box, 
and in the beds old-fashioned flowers, — 
pinks, marigolds, and touch-me-nots, 
— flourished luxuriantly. 

The inside of the house was in keep- 
ing with the exterior. It had large, low 
rooms, with ample fireplaces holding 
shining brass andirons, heavy mahog- 
any chairs with claw feet, and straight- 
backed sofas covered with rich damask. 
It had high post bedsteads with carvings 



[154] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

of flowers on the posts, and the most 
dainty of dimity curtains surmounting 
them. It had strange-looking toilet 
sets, which one of Mr. Brown's ships 
must have brought over from the far 
East. Scattered about were fanciful 
china toys, such as mandarins, that 
wagged their heads at you maliciously 
if you so much as touched them. 

Among all these wonderful treasures 
I recall Mr. Brown playing tag with 
his little granddaughter and me, poking 
after us under chairs and sofas with a 
gold-headed cane, and laughing a 
queer, cracked laugh whenever he 
touched us. Then my mother brought 
me away. 

IV. WILLIAM G. SCHAUFFLER, D. D. 

Standing before me as I write is a 
queer-looking footstool. Its top is cov- 

[155] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



ered, with black broadcloth, upon which 
a dog is worked in worsteds. The top 
is supported by four tall, slim, mahog- 
any legs, showily turned; and a broad 
black fringe hanging from the cushion 
does its best to bring legs and top into 
tasteful union. Time and use have ren- 
dered this footstool by no means an ele- 
gant piece of furniture; yet there is 
hardly an article among our household 
belongings which we should be more 
sorry to lose; for it was made years 
ago by William G. Schauffler, progeni- 
tor of the well-known family of mission- 
aries, while he was at Andover, prepar- 
ing for his work in Constantinople. 

To us children Mr. Schauffler wore 
from the first a halo of romance. He 
had been born in Germany, land of 
vines, legends, ruined castles, and ad- 
vanced theology. He had lived in 

[156] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

Odessa, in the far East, probably some- 
where near Jerusalem. He had been 
persecuted for righteousness* sake — or 
so we firmly believed — and had been 
saved from prison and death by an arch- 
duchess, who had conveyed him in her 
escutcheoned carriage, through the 
darkness and stillness of night, to a 
place from which he could escape. The 
source of this tale I do not know; cer- 
tainly no such occurrence is related in 
Dr. Schauffler's " Autobiography " I 
Moreover, our hero had a wonderful 
flute, the strains of which, soft, sweet, 
and delicious, carried us into a dream 
world. 

To meet Mr. Schauffler in the street 
and have him stop to pat our heads made 
us happy for the day. To bring him a 
flower, to offer him timidly half our 
candy, or to fill his large brown hand 

[ml 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



with our nuts or pop-corn, greatly en- 
hanced the value of what was left. 
When our parents invited him to share 
the hospitality of our homes, we thought 
it a joyful holiday. We even went with 
blithe heart and willing step to the 
weekly Jews' Meeting, drawn thither 
by the hope that we might listen to the 
music of his flute. As I look back, our 
childish devotion seems to me a beauti- 
ful tribute to the simple-hearted truth 
of his character. 

Now we knew that our friend was 
poor. There was of course nothing un- 
common in his poverty; many, indeed 
most, of the young men in the Seminary 
were fully as impecunious. But there 
was something so touching to us chil- 
dren in the poverty of our Mr. Schauf- 
fler, that a few of us combined to earn a 
cloak that should protect him from the 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

pinching, piercing Andover cold. To 
do such a thing to-day might seem a 
slight matter, even to children no older 
than we ; but to attempt it in those days 
was an adventurous undertaking. We 
made a bedquilt, for one thing, out of 
small bits of calico. 'No more play now 
for us. Home we went as soon as Miss 
Davis said " Amen " ; and there we pa- 
tiently plied the bit of polished steel, 
imtil at last — a long and weary at last 
— the quilt was done, and my mother 
paid us for it three whole dollars ! The 
bedquilt is worn out now, and most of 
the little fingers that wrought at it so 
patiently have been folded to their last 
rest over still hearts ; but the interest of 
this mite thrown into the treasury of our 
Lord is still accumulating unto this day. 
Some of the money we needed was 
earned in a more novel manner. When 

[159] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



we asked Mrs. Porter to buy some 
bunches of gay lamplighters she re- 
plied, " I can make my own. But," 
pushing up her spectacles and turning 
her brown eyes straight upon us, " I will 
give you twenty-five cents, if you will 
come in every Wednesday and Satur- 
day afternoon, and read aloud to me 
' Mason on Self-Knowledge.' " 

Think of it! That four little girls, 
full of life from the crowns of their 
heads to the soles of their feet, should 
spend all their holiday afternoons read- 
ing " Mason on Self- Knowledge " aloud 
to this peculiar old lady, in the faint 
glimmer of her big, vacant, tomb-like 
rooms! A hurried, frightened glance 
passed from one to another of us, and 
some one faltered out consent. We 
scrambled for the door, but the quiet 
voice called, us back, and we heard : 



1 160 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

" I want to add, that as we should 
make every occasion one of seeking 
Christ, I will give you twenty-five cents 
without, and fifty cents with remarks! " 

"Mason on Self- Knowledge," com- 
mented upon by Mrs. Porter! But we 
accepted the offer, and at the end of 
many long weeks received our fifty 
cents. 

At last the money necessary for the 
cloak had all been collected. I have for- 
gotten who selected it for us, but I have 
a vivid remembrance of how it looked. 
The material was a red plaid. A full 
skirt, gathered into a yoke, descended 
to the feet; and as if this did not give 
sufficient warmth, a full, square cape 
came down almost as far. A large gilt 
clasp fastened the garment at the neck, 
and two red tassels dangled midway. 
Imagine a student on Andover Hill to- 
il [ 161 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



day in this gay plumage ! At that time 
it was not considered at all showy or 
out of taste, only appropriate and 
becoming. 

Besides working hard over his books, 
Mr. Schauffler did everything he could 
towards earning his way. In the work- 
shop where the other students bungled 
at coffins he made a variety of beauti- 
fully wrought articles, for which there 
was always a demand. Of these things 
our own parlor contained several; and 
one of them at least, the stool of which 
I have spoken, is still in existence. 

Mr. Schauffler's eventful career after 
he left Andover is well known. I have 
always hoped that some of the inspira- 
tion and energy he showed in his labors 
among the Jews in Constantinople was 
received from the Jews' Meeting at 
Mrs. Porter's; that his success in help- 

[162] ' 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

ing to translate the Bible was due in 
some measure to his studies at Andover; 
and that he kept a warm corner in his 
memory for the four little girls who, 
to buy him a red cloak, pricked their 
fingers making patchwork, and on holi- 
day afternoons read " Mason on Self- 
Knowledge." 

V. MOSES STUART 

The last person connected with Old 
Andover whom I shall describe is my 
father, Moses Stuart, who was professor 
of Greek and Hebrew at the Seminary 
for nearly forty years. His home life 
was only an incident in his scholarly 
career. Seven children, three boys and 
four girls, soon filled his commodious 
house. If we could have brought, each 
one of us, a trail of exegetical glory 
from heaven, we should doubtless have 

[163] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



met a warmer welcome; but, after all, 
we found the kindest and most gen- 
erous of fathers, — when he remem- 
bered us. We were there, we were 
to be cared for, to be loved, to be edu- 
cated, to want nothing that he could 
provide, but not to interfere with the 
work to which he had been called, and, 
children or no children, must faithfully 
perform. 

That we, on our part, should have 
felt any particular interest in this work 
could hardly have been expected; I 
doubt whether, until we had left our 
happy childhood behind us, we had 
much idea what it was. We saw books 
printed in types unknown to us crowd- 
ing the study shelves and tables. We 
looked with awe upon the piles of manu- 
script written in the neat, characteristic 
handwriting of our father, wondering 

[164] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

what they could all be about. It was 
the Bible, of course; but why the Bible? 
Did God need a new interpreter? If 
so, and our father had been chosen, was 
that the reason he was named Moses, 
the name borne by that other Moses 
who wrote the Ten Commandments on 
those wonderful tables of stone? 

I think it must have come to us early 
that we were born to no common lot. 
Andover homes were, every one of them 
on that sacred Hill, withdrawn in a 
monastic seclusion from the rest of the 
world. Strict Puritan rules governed 
every household, and yet the young life 
obeyed the Must and Must Not of the 
regime. To us as a family this was most 
imperative; for our mother, wisest and 
kindest of all mothers, kept the fact con- 
stantly before us that our father was 
chosen and set apart from the rest of 

[165] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



the world to do a great and important 
work. 

His appearance has been well de- 
scribed by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 
his reminiscences of his school-days at 
Andover. He writes: 

"Of the noted men of Andover the 
one whom I remember best was Pro- 
fessor Moses Stuart. His house was 
nearly opposite the one in which I re- 
sided, and I often met him and listened 
to him in the chapel of the Seminary. 
I have seen few more striking figures 
in my life than his, as I remember it. 
Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, 
a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, 
expressive lips, great solemnity and im- 
pressiveness of voice and manner, he 
was my early model of a classic orator. 
His air was Roman, his neck long and 
bare like Cicero's, and his toga — that 

[166] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

is his broadcloth cloak — was carried 
on his arm whatever might have been 
the weather, with such a statue-like, 
rigid grace that he might have been 
turned into marble as he stood, and 
looked noble by the side of the antiques 
of the Vatican." ^ 

It is a difficult, almost a hopeless, task 
to sketch the character of one who, with 
delicate, poetical, literary tastes, yet 
gave his whole soul to dry, grammatical 
exegesis until he considered the inter- 
pretation of a word, even of a vowel, to 
contain a truth of the utmost impor- 
tance to the welfare of the sin-ridden 
world. It was the whole-souled earnest- 
ness of his work, his strong belief in it 
and its importance, that made his daily 
life so scholarly and set apart. 



* " Pages from an Old Volume of Life," p. 149. Hough- 
ton, Mifflin and Co., 1891. 

[167] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



This may be better understood 
through a simple and familiar record of 
his every-day home life during his long 
professional work at Andover. There 
is little to relate of anecdote or even 
of the usual experiences of a quiet New 
England town. From his study to the 
chapel of the Theological Seminary, 
back and forth, day after day, meeting 
no one, but in the silence and solitude 
through which he walked hearing and 
recognizing the song of every bird that 
caroled on the trees ; noting the changes 
in the elms which he had loved ever since 
he had seen the tiny twig planted in the 
rough, new ground; watching tlirough 
the brief summer days for the flowers 
that sometimes dotted his path; over- 
looking no slightest thing in earth or 
sky that God had given, — such was 
his life. 



[168] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

He brought into his daily life many 
of the habits acquired when he was a 
farmer's boy. He felt that every mo- 
ment passed in sleep, after the most 
rigorous demands of nature were satis- 
fied, was lost time. In summer at four, 
and in winter at five, he was astir ; and 
the occupations of the day began. In 
summer his garden was his delight. To 
this he went when Andover Hill was 
still wrapped in sleep. His trim beds, 
whether of flowers or of vegetables, 
were always in luxuriant order. To 
bring in the earliest flowers for the 
breakfast-table, to surprise his family 
with some fine home-grown fruit, gave 
him keen pleasure. That these results 
were not obtained without difficulty is 
plain from a reminiscence by one of his 
pupils. 

" I well remember," writes Dr. Way- 

[169] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



land, " that on one occasion he needed 
a little assistance in getting in his hay, 
and indicated to his class that he would 
be gratified if some of us would help him 
for an hour or two. There was, of 
course, a general turnout. The crop 
was a sorry one, and as I was raking 
near him, I intimated to him something 
of the kind. I shall never forget his 
reply : * Bah ! was there ever climate 
and soil like this! Manure the land as 
much as you will, it all leaches through 
this gravel, and very soon not a trace 
of it can be seen. If you plant early, 
everything is liable to be cut off by the 
late frosts of spring. If you plant late, 
your crop is destroyed by the early 
frosts of autumn. If you escape these, 
the burning sun of summer scorches 
your crop, and it perishes by heat and 
drought. If none of these evils over- 

flTol 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

take you, clouds of insects eat up your 
crop, and. what the caterpillar leaves 
the canker-worm devours.' Spoken in 
his deliberate and solemn utterance, 
I could compare it to nothing but 
the maledictions of one of the old 
prophets." ^ 

In winter he walked to the village, if 
possible, or around the square. When 
walking or working in the open air was 
absolutely impossible, he took refuge in 
his wood-house, accomplishing in a deft 
and rapid manner feats an Irishman 
might envy. The one thing that must 
be accomplished was to bring his ex- 
hausted nervous system into such a con- 
dition that he could do hard mental 
work and do it well. To this one great 
end he made the most every-day inci- 
dents subordinate, and amid pain and 

^ " Semi-Centennial Celebration," p. 158. Andover, 1859. 



OLD ANDOYER DAYS 



weakness and discouragement he ac- 
complished his purpose. 

His exercise taken, he was ready for 
his breakfast, and woe to any mischance 
by which it and the whole family were 
not ready for him. I have pictures in 
my memory of sleepy little children 
hurrying into their clothes, and rushing 
pell-mell down-stairs, when his step was 
heard on the graveled walk in front of 
the house. To be late at breakfast was 
an offense; to be absent was not allow- 
able except in case of illness. Break- 
fast was often a silent meal. The hour 
was still early: in winter we ate by the 
light of tallow candles. The exercise 
had, not yet recuperated Mr. Stuart's 
tired nervous system, and stillness acted 
beneficially with the smoking food. 

Then followed family prayers. These 
often indicated the character of the 



[172] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

previous night. Had it been quiet 
and restful, there were uttered bright 
and hopeful as well as devout words; 
but had there been sleeplessness, or the 
hardly less distressing visions of the 
night, nothing found, voice but the most 
pathetic entreaties to his God for rest 
and solace, " before being taken away 
to be seen here no more forever." These 
moods generally passed with the 
" Amen." It was as if having told all 
to the divine Orderer of Events, sick- 
ness and death were no longer his care, 
and he had nothing more to do but take 
up his waiting work. From family 
prayers he went directly to his study. 

To show how entirely the life of the 
whole family was affected by that of its 
scholarly head, I may say that almost 
every room in the house was known, at 
one time or another, by the name of 

[173] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



" the study." The study of later years 
was a large upper chamber facing south. 
It was not a cheerful room: old brown 
paper of a stiff pattern covered the 
walls, and four yellow maps of Pales- 
tine hung where they could be most 
readily used. In one corner a small 
bookcase stood upon a chest of drawers. 
The case was full of well-worn volumes, 
bound in Russia leather; and the chest 
was stored with sermons, lectures, and 
other professional papers. A square 
study table, and a high desk beside a 
window were both methodically ar- 
ranged with implements for writing and 
with books wanted daily, such as lexi- 
cons and Bibles in various tongues. 
Near by was a large fireplace, with a 
plain wooden mantelpiece, crowded Avith 
books. The other furniture of the room 
was plain and old-fashioned, nothing 

[174] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

being admitted except what was indis- 
pensable. Over the mantelpiece hung 
a silver watch which ticked for over 
fifty years, measuring off days, weeks, 
and months, rich in God's work. 

When the door of this room was shut, 
it was set apart from daily life as com- 
pletely as if it had been transported 
to another world. Immediately every 
member of the household began to move 
about on tiptoe; and whatever words 
were spoken were uttered in subdued 
tones. From that moment until twelve, 
only a matter of the utmost importance 
made permissible a knock upon the 
study door. Visitors, no matter from 
what distance or of what social and lit- 
erary standing, were all denied admit- 
tance. Business exigencies were ig- 
nored; and any Seminary student who 
unluckily forgot the hours was sent 

[rrT] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



away with a short if not a curt reply. 
When two old friends asked him to 
marry them, the hour for the ceremony 
being fixed for ten o'clock, he refused, 
saying, "But that is in my study 
hours! " Even the ordinary housekeep- 
ing sounds were made under protest. 
An unlucky fall, the slamming of a 
blind, a second summons from the hall 
door, — all were received with a warn- 
ing thump from the study, or a pull at 
its bell. "I cannot be disturbed"; no 
law of Medes or Persians was ever more 
absolute. The task of reducing a fam- 
ily so full of life to this state of or- 
derly quiet must have seemed nearly 
impossible, but Mrs. Stuart succeeded 
in accomplishing it for many long 
years. 

Out from this closed room came first 
the voice of prayer. Within, one felt, a 

[176] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

sensitive soul was wrestling with its 
God. Rising and swelling, broken 
often with emotion, his voice had a 
pleading, wailing cadence, touching to 
listen to, tender to recall. Then fol- 
lowed the intoning of passages from the 
Hebrew Psalms; and here the heart, 
mellowed, and comforted by near inter- 
course vidth the Hebrews' God, found 
full utterance. Into every room of that 
still house the jubilant words came ring- 
ing with their solemn joy. Then came 
several hours of intense intellectual 
labor. In the following note, sent dur- 
ing such a period of study to the student 
who was for the time the librarian at the 
Seminary, one can see beneath the punc- 
tilious politeness of the request the stu- 
dent's utter preoccupation with his 
work, and his intolerance of finding his 
" way blocked up," even for a time. 

12 [ 177 ] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



Wednesday Morning. 

My dear Sir, — Unexpectedly I have come 
upon an exigency, this morning, wh. renders an 
appeal to the Cor an necessary. Will you do me 
the kindness to send me the II Vol. of Maracdus^ 
wh. has the Arab, text, with the Versions and 
Notes, (for I want both these), if I rightly 
remember. Should it not be so, you may send 
the copy of Salens Cor an therewith. 

I am sorry to trouble you; but I must find 
my way blocked up, unless I can make the 
appeal in question. 

Yours truly, 

M. Stuart. 

Another librarian, later the Rev. 
John Todd, d.d., reports: 

" The rapidity with which he exam- 
ined books was wonderful. The whole 
library was his lexicon. Being librarian 
during my senior year, I had occasion 
to marvel over, as well as to handle, the 
whole wheelbarrow loads he would send 
back on the close of every term. He 
took out, I think, more books than all 
the rest of the Seminary." 

r 178 1 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

It was always high holiday for his 
family when there arrived in one of the 
slow sailing-vessels a package of books 
bearing a foreign mark. For weeks, 
perhaps, it had been anxiously looked 
for. Every morning the small gilt vane 
on the Seminary chapel had been in- 
spected to see whether the wind was 
favorable for the coming ship; every 
evening the last ray of daylight was 
used for the same purpose; and never 
did an adverse wind howl more loudly 
around our house, or a storm seem more 
pitiless, than when it delayed the com- 
ing of the much coveted treasures. 

It would have been a study for an 
artist, — the face of my father, when, 
the books at last his, the whole family 
was called together to see and admire 
them. His eyes, usually a little dull, 
seemed, to flash with delight. His lips, 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



always his most expressive feature, 
quivered with emotion. The arrival of 
the books was to him Hke the coming of 
much beloved, much longed-for friends, 
with whom he looked forward to spend- 
ing hours of delightful and congenial 
companionship. 

Precisely as the college clock struck 
twelve there came an energetic pushing 
back of chair and footstool, and the 
whole family drew a long breath of 
relief. Morning study hours were over, 
and we were once more free! 

Coming out of his room, always with 
a pale, weary face, the professor went 
without delay to his exercise again; 
seeking the garden, the grounds, the 
wood-pile, or the walk, as the season or 
the weather made most desirable. Then 
home just in time for the half -past- 
twelve dinner, which, like the breakfast, 



[igo] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

must always be on the table at the ap- 
pointed moment, with the family in in- 
stant readiness to partake. As he was 
a thorough dyspeptic, the matter of 
food was of the greatest importance to 
him. He was not dainty, but he re- 
quired and provided the very best the 
market afforded ; and it was curious to 
notice how even the tones and words of 
the blessing he invoked were affected by 
what was spread before him. Good 
nourishing food braced the spent nerv- 
ous system, and gave tone and elas- 
ticity to the exhausted vitality, and con- 
sequent simny views of hfe and its 
occupations. 

After dinner came the social hour of 
the day. If we had any plans to make, 
any requests to proffer, now was the 
moment. Indeed, this was the only time 
when home and its needs seemed to have 

TTsTl 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



any place in the professor's thoughts. 
Then a newspaper, a review, or some 
book not connected with his studies, was 
in his hand, but he was ready to put it 
down if any other object of interest 
presented itself. If not, the reading 
continued until his lecture, which was 
delivered in the afternoon, and occu- 
pied about an hour, or sometimes two. 
This duty over, came the exercise again, 
the early tea, and family prayers; and 
evening was entered upon at the first 
approach of twilight. Every new lamp 
that promised assistance was purchased 
as fast as invented, the scholar, with his 
enthusiasm for the new and convenient, 
considering every one, for a time, better 
than its predecessor. 

Study was never severe during these 
evening hours. Now he was willing to 
be interrupted, and often hailed as a 

[isT] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

godsend the visit of an agreeable ac- 
quaintance. Eminently social in his 
literary labors, he found in nothing 
greater pleasure than in discussing with 
one of congenial tastes the work upon 
which he was for the time engaged ; and 
if he absorbed the lion's share of the 
conversation, his listener was never 
wearied, and seldom failed to go away 
a wiser and a better man. With a 
friend in whose companionship he took 
especial pleasure, he read Greek plays 
in the evening for several winters, show- 
ing all the enthusiasm of a young man, 
and the critical acumen of a ripe scholar. 
This until nine o'clock; but the mo- 
ment the hands of the old mahogany 
clock pointed to that hour, night with 
the time for needed rest had come. 
After nine no guest lingered v/ho under- 
stood the regime of this student's life. 

[183] ""^ 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



We children would as soon have been 
expected to get up a dance or a card- 
party as to be from home or out of our 
beds when that hour had come. Many- 
hairbreadth escapes we had from de- 
tection, many frights, and many awk- 
ward contretemps. Gentlemen callers 
from the Seminary, ignorant of the nine 
o'clock rule, or for some unexplainable 
reason unmindful of the lateness of the 
hour, have been timidly but urgently 
requested by one or another of the four 
daughters of the house to leave cau- 
tiously by the side door. In the main, 
however, the law was another of the 
Medes and Persians, and kept as invio- 
lable as it could have been kept by seven 
young people full of occupations and 
amusements. Dogs and cats, window- 
blinds, gates, everything imaginable or 
unimaginable, were now under the ban 

fisT] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

of stillness. It was not a common still- 
ness that was required; but the only 
stillness considered such by a man whose 
sleep was that of a diseased nervous 
system and an overtaxed brain. Often 
during the wakeful hours which drew 
their slow length along, there came from 
the professor's room the same wailing 
prayer which had ushered in his day of 
work; and often he might have been 
met gliding around the house, seeking 
for rest but finding none. 

When he had grown old and feeble, 
it was a great delight to him to have 
one of the young students at the Semi- 
nary come in to read to him; and the 
hour was often forgotten in the interest 
of the book. Light literature, for the 
first time in his life, he then indulged in 
freely. He would often say to his 
daughters when they were reading to 

[185] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



him, " You see the good of keeping this 
till you are old ; it is a tonic to me now." 
It was not an unusual thing for him to 
come quietly into the room where these 
books were kept, possess himself of the 
novel, his interest in which could not be 
postponed, and inform us of the de- 
nouement at the tea-table. 

That the trend of his studies did not 
narrow his mind, or the quiet Andover 
life dull his sympathies toward all the 
great onward movements of the world, 
is a matter of surprise; but to the last 
of his busy life no one saw more quickly 
or enjoyed more keenly the promise of 
a wonderful future. Vividly comes the 
memory of a lovely Sunday morning 
when, as usual, we children, decorous in 
Sunday garb, surrounded him on the 
way to church. His Saturday night 
weekly newspaper had contained an 

[186] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

account of a telescopic discovery in the 
moon. It was not his custom to allow 
a weekly paper to be read on the Sab- 
bath ; but certain it is that on that morn- 
ing he had seen the paper, had read the 
account of the discovery, and was too 
full of the story to reserve it for the pro- 
fane Monday so far away. His pale 
face alight with his interest, looking 
from one to another of us, he explained 
rapidly what had been discovered. We 
listened enthusiastically, while the sol- 
emn bell of the chapel tolled unheeded 
reproofs* When the first steam-engine 
drew its train of cars through the pleas- 
ant meadows that, stretching back of 
his house, bordered the Shawsheen 
River, we were at the dinner-table. 
He started from his seat, and clasp- 
ing his hands as if in prayer, said fer- 
vently, "Thank God! thank God!" 

[187] 



OLD ANDOVER DAYS 



He seemed sometimes to put aside his 
usual calm judgment, and to enjoy an 
improbability with particular enthusi- 
asm. It seems almost hard to think how 
much he lost by dying before electricity, 
photography, the Atlantic cable, the 
telephone, X-rays, and all the other 
modern marvels had been discovered 
and invented ; but perhaps in that other 
life he pities us, that in our ignorance 
we should pity him. 

Such days stretched out into years 
with little of change, and such years 
into half a century of work. Time mel- 
lowed the life, smoothing the rougher 
edges, and ripening and perfecting the 
Christian scholar. We children grew 
from childhood to maturity, and one 
after another dropped out from the still, 
monastic life of Andover Hill into the 
great working world. Often, however, 

[188] 



SOME MEN OF OLDEN TIME 

we carried back into the seclusion of our 
old home the interests of our new lives, 
to gladden the failing days of our 
father. In him we always found the 
same enthusiasm for the new, and the 
same hopeful plans for fresh work yet 
to be accomplished. But the scholar's 
task was not to be finished here. In 
the howhng of a fierce winter storm he 
listened to the summons, "Well done, 
good and faithful servant, enter thou 
into the joy of thy Lord." 



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